Training where to lay

[ackie]

(TL;DR at bottom)

I know you have to lock your free-range pullets into the area with the nesting boxes (coop, pen, whatever) in order to teach them where to lay. I've been avoiding it because I dont actually have the appropriate amount of space per bird, but now a bunch of them have bright red faces and combs so I'm going to try it. BUT I know stress will knock them off laying, so it seems counter-intuitive to take away their unlimited free-range space and coop them all up together.

They already sleep there and have worked out roosting - actually mixing it up every night with different birds next to different birds every night, which surprised me - so they definitely have enough roosting space. I could coop up fewer of them, but that would mean locking the others out which would break them of sleeping in the coop, which I think would be more annoying in the long run.

I have considered sectioning off half (that's the easiest spot to do it), keeping the red-faced ones on one side, moving the rest to the other side, putting up the divider, letting the non-layers out in the morning, reopening the whole space to the layers & then reopening the whole thing like 30 min before dusk for everyone else to go to bed and repeat. But that sounds like a lot of work.

I'm going to stop rambling now.

TL;DR not enough space to lock them up and feel guilty about it, but want eggs. what do?

 

[ackie]

update: girls are laying now! 3 nest boxes & one random hidey spot.

 

[Ruby Rogue]

If they haven't begun laying yet, I'd wait to see if they use the boxes, even if you're a little short on space, it's really worth it to train them to lay where they should. You may even have to re-train them periodically.

 

[Kiraeh]

I'd give your girls a chance to get it right, especially if there are mature hens already using the boxes correctly. Maybe get a fake egg or two to put in there if that won't encourage too much broodiness.

 

[Alaskan]

I would hope that fake eggs, and not letting them free range for a few days would get them trained to the nests.

Another option is to only let them free range in the afternoon, with the hope that most eggs are laid before they dash off.

 

[ackie]

I don't know how I missed this!

haha no worries! I liked your story anyway

one of my girls was laying in some ivy & I didnt know until...

 

[ackie]

I got one of those hens to lay in a nesting box once by moving the place they were laying closer and closer to it each day and then they actually laid one egg in the box! And went broody.

Right now I have two types of nesting boxes in with the pullets, one more closed in /private than the other.

One of each type has a fake egg in it.

 

[aart]

They get along so far. It's actually interesting because one will try to mount a hen, and she doesn't cooperate, and like 3 others cockrells will show up and kick him off of her. I'm going to pretend its chivalrous.

If the other 3 don't try to mount her, I'd agree..... Chivalry.

 

[Allthefloofs]

Okay. So we just had our first egg from my July girls today. I don't know if this is an across the board thing, but she was acting weird. She has had a red comb/wattles for a few weeks now but today? Today was a totally weird day. It started with her jumping on the coop, trying to crawl under a folded lawn chair, whining for a couple hours non stop and just generally going all over the place yelling for a couple hours. I watched her for a bit then she popped in the nest box...so then our Blue EE started an egg song ( a terrible, terrible egg song, the neighbors are going to be mad!) and she popped out. Repeat x 4. So then I locked them all in. Two hours later we had an egg! So I don't know if you should watch for the whole group to become bonkers or not, but it worked for me? We have some plywood nest boxes that I can move around and moving them seemed to attract attention and she ended up hopping in one (destined to be the one they all want to use, of course), once I moved it to a new spot. I don't know if any of that is helpful at all, but I hope it does.

 

[ackie]

I could also probably pull 4 pullets and put them in a different closed coop with a cock/rell and 5 ladies, but I dont want to knock them off laying either.