Sleeping in the nest boxes in an A frame

Yeah...that is the problem with Aframes. Sleeping in the nest boxes generally results in poop in the nest box, since chickens poop a lot overnight while roosting. But you're saying you're not getting poop in the nest boxes... Poopy eggs is really the only reason I'm aware of as to why you don't want birds sleeping in there. In an A frame, other than creating covered nest boxes UNDER the roost (on the ground basically), there's not much room to work with to make sure the roosts are higher...

 

I agree, poop in the nest box makes for dirty eggs unless you're totally vigilant about cleaning them out every morning.

 

My girls like to sleep in the nest boxes, but they poop in a corner, so not a problem...

 

I'm dealing with the same problem. Use pine shaving in the nest boxes to dry out the poop, you will have cleaner eggs. You can block the nest boxes at night and then open them in the morning (which is a hassel). I thought about changing one of the ends on the A frame bottom to be a nest box and then remove all the nest boxes in the top and change them to a roost.

 

I tried to put a roost in the A-Frame coop I built, but there wasn't enough head room for the chickens to like the roosts. I ended up placing the roost bar practically on the floor of the upstairs "lodging" section, just for the chickens to have something to perch on, should they so desire to do so. Mine also slept in the nest boxes, but there really was very little poop problem. It's almost as if they knew they needed to use just one corner of the nest box, and they really didn't poop all that much - one night's worth was really easy to scoop out with some pine shavings before they laid their eggs later in the day.

 

I have two A frames ...I would love for my Hubby to lift the whole thing off the ground a couple of feet(nest box too!) then it would be taller thus I would have the option of adding a roosting pole and the nesting box could soley be used for egg laying. Mine are over a year old now so they need to be re-done anyway. I want to replace the chicken wire with hardware cloth and add a door to make it easier to get into. It would also need to be roofed to provide shelter.

 

Our four girls are all sleeping in the nest box. I thought this was maybe because they were young (16 & 20 weeks) and didn't know about sleeping on their perches yet. The only problem with this is the poops in the morning!! As they are not laying yet I suppose this isn't too bad and we do clean them out early so when they do FINALLY lay it shouldn't be a problem but I did think they would automatically sleep on their perches at night.