Topic of the Week - Nest boxes

[DobieClose]

When I 1st got into chickens, I thought the idea of a few larger scale stairs, sort of like bleachers, could work well. The chickens could hop up the 3 steps, one at a time, reach the top, spin around with butt towards wall, then hunker down & roost for the night. Under their butts, against the wall, I had a poop chute, resembling a concrete truck chute, on a slight decline (since poop runs downhill - well, according to plumbers, that is their famous saying lol), with a bucket hanging at the chute's end, to catch poo.

The nest boxes were under the bottom step & the chickens used them perfectly right away!
In back of the nest boxes, under the 2 higher step "bleachers" was storage, with a little side door, where I stored my straw & wood chip bales. 3 bleacher type steps, each step 20" high. Looked great & seemed like a good idea at the time, in theory.

I knew about mites living in wood, I've had Pigeons for decades. Painting all surfaces with an outdoor grade paint helps, as well as being easier to clean.
I painted the entire inside of the coop, & figured why not get creative, mural style, blue sky & white puffy clouds on ceiling, flowering Dogwood trees on walls, grass & flowers near floor, all kinds of flowers, Forget me nots, Sunflowers, Marigolds, Tulips, etc., floors as well & then coated with a floor urethane. Bleachers were painted a pale green base then I added branches & flowers of Dogwood trees & I got a large window cling of flowering Dogwood, so the window was letting light in, but was not something a chicken would try to fly through. It was open at top for airflow. I painted Tulips all around the nest boxes. Yup, it was adorable, a work of art & seemed to work well...at 1st.

One issue...well the chickens did hop up 1 step at a time, BUT they didn't hop back down that way! Nope, they came down flapping like hell, from top step all the way outside through the door, when I opened it! Flying chickens & roosters as soon as I open the door? Talk about frazzled! Wasn't a safe way to start the day for me or my sweet birds. I realized that top step may be appealing to them to roost high, but 5 feet up is Too High if they're jumping down crazily...they could get hurt. Larger chickens & seniors as well as young birds...don't need a slipped tendon or broken leg so I soon realized this was not safe for them.

Also...
Chicken poop is runnier than pigeon poo, but Not as runny as I thought.
The clogged poop chute Always needed cleaning, and it got stinky. The bucket meant to catch runny poo, well it would have, but the poo was sticking to the chute...just didn't work as planned. Then "somebody" started laying an egg a day, in the poop chute, full of poop! Gross!

3rd issue, the steps of the bleachers Always needed poop scraping, because while at night the birds did poop into the chute, all throughout the day, the birds pooped EVERYWHERE else then stomped it down, so by the time I got home from work, I had to use a putty knife to scrape it all off the bleacher steps.

So yeah...I learned! Don't we all?!

Frazzled chickens bombing me the second I open the door each morning, then coming home from work to scrape & scoop Lots Of Poop, where poop wasn't "planned to accumulate" was obviously Not working. I ripped out the entire bleacher idea.

The coop had an interior remodel, where I used 2x4s to create perches, Not too high, so no one gets hurt.

Nest boxes were placed elsewhere, on the floor. I didn't want to be scraping poop off, so I made sloped tops, no one even tries to perch there. To keep the wood chips inside the nest box area, I just put a 2x4 there across the bottom. 1 nestbox per every 3 hens works well here. Sometimes they pile into the same box together, anyway...always seems to be the same ones snuggled, laying eggs at the same time, too. Funny girls.

I lost all 1st coop photos due to a phone mishap (the beautiful but disfunctional bleachers), but here are revamp interior pics, much more efficient & safe.

So in conclusion...what have I learned?

Things don't always go as planned, chickens have their own ideas & ways of doing things, so try to work along with them, considering their habits & preferences, safety 1st.

Also, Most Importantly, Always Consider the Poop Factor!

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It looks so neat and clean right now.

 

[Liz Birdlover]

It looks so neat and clean right now.

You know it doesn't STAY that clean over time with little fluffy butts pooping & wings flapping. I do use a plastic snow shovel when cleaning floors but mostly it gets dusty from their preening off after dust bathing outside, I guess. I used heavy duty paint though, it's held up so when I do a good cleaning it's like new again.

 

[Liz Birdlover]

I'm sorry sorry to hear you lost all your pictures of the first coop. I would have LOVED to see pictures of the murals!! It sounds super adorable!

I got a new phone & spent hours at the Verizon store supposedly uploading 2,500 photos...still I have no idea what happened to them & the dizzbrain that waited on me is no longer there. When you lose photos, some very precious as they are of loved ones now passed on, it is truly heartbreaking. I know I should be backing up...it's my own darn fault for not doing that in the 1st place.

 

[Wetmorechick]

My husband made these nest boxes for our girls! They LOVE them!

 

[Ascholten]

Mine are happy in milk crates, with a bit of wood chips on the bottom. Other than that they'll hang out in just a 'box' area with shavings on the floor. They are not picky really.

Aaron

 

[MotherHen007]

I have 12 nest boxes they are wooden and closed on top, bottom, back and both sides…open only in front. ALL of my hens lay only in one box (second from the left). The other 11 boxes are a total waste of space haha. I use fake wooden eggs in there to deter snake friends. I gather fresh eggs twice a day but I have had rat snakes get in at night and eat the fake eggs. Mine never have had issues sleeping in the nest boxes and always roost at night. They free range 5 acres during the day and return to the coop only to lay their egg and to go to sleep. If I built a chicken coop again I’d only make a few nest boxes. Growing up we used old dresser drawers as nest boxes in our coop and I remember our hens fought over their preferred nest. I used straw for bedding and sometimes add in pine needles or leaves in the fall.

 

[Ascholten]

Isn't that funny tho? You can have 100 hens, 20 nest boxes, and every one of them girls will fight bicker and bitch over ONE BOX !! It's not even something special, like the one closest to the window, the one in the far corner, the one away from the door etc, nope, just they pick a box and that's that !

one thing I find funny is, I have ONE nest box, it's long about maybe 2 feet or so?? they want the one corner generally. If two of them have to lay at the same time, generally they just go in there and lay, but occasionally there'll be a squabble about 'who' gets the 'favorite' corner???. When that happens not only do I hear it, but if you go and look both will be in there.. but they will be butt to butt, looking opposite of each other, where as usually when there are two at a time, they are lined up or facing each other. EVERY time there's been a kerfluffle that I went and looked, they ended up not looking at each other. I just find that funny.

aaron

 

[Iluveggers]

My nest box is set up communal, it is about 40 inches wide and 14 inches from the wall, just like a big drawer. It is about 6 inches off the ground, lower than the lowest roost. Do you all think I need to add a cover? I have an old piece of corrugated roofing I can slant above it, but I prefer to just leave it if anyone has used something like that successfully. Will probably not add dividers so a bunch can go in at once to lay. There is a 16 inch swing out door on the back side of the box, so I can reach in to get eggs without entering the coop.

 

[Onyxflock]

This is such a funny string, cause those dern Hens can totally confound you.
My $400 beautiful nesting coop is a giant spider house and they don't like the orange curtain on our 2 nest homenade box. So they bicker over the blue curtain or lay in the old tires I have in the run.
One time under the house, really hard to get to.
took some looking, lol!

 

[Molpet]

This is such a funny string, cause those dern Hens can totally confound you.
My $400 beautiful nesting coop is a giant spider house and they don't like the orange curtain on our 2 nest homenade box. So they bicker over the blue curtain or lay in the old tires I have in the run.
One time under the house, really hard to get to.
took some looking, lol!

Yeah I have a grabber for old people to get some places they lay.