Strange Nesting Boxes

[Housefullofhens]

My husband & I spent a nice chunk of money making nice nesting boxes for our chickens. All they want to do in the nesting boxes is roost on the sides of them & poop in them. We started using cleaned out Tidy Cat liter buckets to carry feed in. We would occasionally leave a bucket or 2 of feed in the coop for easy access for us & we would just scoop the feed into the trough that we built. They will ONLY lay their eggs in these buckets. Needless to say, we now have 5 Tidy Cat buckets in our coop & the nice nesting boxes have now been removed. Does anyone else have weird places their chickens prefer to lay eggs?

 

[dmidkiff66]

Well, I'm waiting for mine to leave me a note asking for a My Pillow in each box. And maybe some meal worm flavored gummy bears bowls on the side.

 

[sumi]

I've had hens lay in the strangest places too, regardless of whether or not it was private lol And they had more than enough nest boxes, which did get used too...

Some alternative "nests" that comes to mind is our laundry basket, kitchen cupboard if we left the doors open, on our bed in the mornings, sometimes while my ex was still in it (talk about breakfast in bed?) An old washing machine...

 

[Gail Laubenthal]

When we built our hoop coop we had an old set of laying boxes, but needed more. I went to Lowes and Home Depot and bought their buckets, had my husband build a frame and the hens went in immediately. I have since replaced the buckets with a row of wooden, partitioned boxes, which they also use. Recently, a few hens have begun flying over our fence and laying their eggs in the sheep hay. Yesterday, I put a basket out there and found 3 eggs last night. I don't mind them laying in other places, as long as I know where it is. A watchful eye can prevent a pile of eggs in a hidden nest.

 

[Ayuki]

My chickens wholeheartedly believe that they belong in the house and would obviously prefer to lay here:

 

[Spartan22]

My hens prefers Hilfiger towels and blankets In their nests before they will lay eggs.
Just kidding.

They are very smart creatures but they still have bird brains - safety instinct. If they feel that their future offsprings will not be safe in the nests you’ve made, they will scout and make their own. I have 14 nests for 30+ hens in different locations and made out of different materials. They use at least 8 of them and pile up eggs on 4 or 5 (I guess their fav) in the last 2 months some decided to make 2 more unreachable nest. One 2 feet up where I store their summer supplies behind the 4 nests, 2nd was 4’ up on a drawer I neglected to set up for nesting and some occasions find 1 or two eggs in the coop corners. Go figure!

 

[Meg-in-MT]

This is my Hide-y chicken. Aptly named, as every other week she's moved to a different spot in the barn! This is a tip-out hay feeder in our box stall. The bottom of it is about 4' off the ground. Her new fave

 

[Shadrach]

Yup, think safe, quiet and secluded, a bit like this.

 

[Mosey2003]

Chickens will get ya. I have 5 that "refuse to chicken." I don't know what went wrong raising them, but the things won't roost, period. And one of them STILL lays her egg on the floor of the coop or the ground out in the run. Drives me mad.

 

[Faraday40]

This is probably the most unusual place I found an egg. It actually happened twice.

Basically, that shelf is about 6.5' up. It was supposed to be a nice place for me to keep my cleaning bucket & other chicken supplies. The chickens thought otherwise & started sleeping up there - knocking everything to the ground. Fearing the danger of a falling bucket hitting a bird below, my supplies went back into the garage & the hens got another place to roost.

Of course there are times that a hen decides this high, open shelf is a good place to lay an egg. Since there is no ledge, the outcome is often a "splat"on the ground. Once a hen's egg rolled backwards & got stuck (photo above). We grew out some turkeys last summer and ended up keeping one through the winter. She started laying in January. Of course she ALWAYS lays her eggs up there, so the second time this happened, it was a turkey egg.