What to put in nest boxes?

[kriswrite]

What do you put in your nest boxes to help keep them clean and prevent egg breakage?

 

[hennyannie]

Pine shavings.

 

[gryeyes]

Yup, pine shavings. I do have the non-skid shelf liner in the very bottom of two of my larger, community nest boxes, with pine shavings on top of them. And in the four milk crate nest boxes, I have some packing foam (not Styrofoam, as chickens eat that stuff!) like you find in electronics equipment packing boxes, to keep the pine shavings from falling out of them.

Everywhere else (multiple coops) I use just pine shavings.

 

[bantamboy]

ive always used hay or pine straw in mine the chickens seem to be fine with it they make pretty little nests in it.

 

[hennyannie]

Quote:
Been trying to come up with something for the bottom of the nest box: shelving paper Thank You for this great idea!

 

[meowteri2]

I gave them wall to wall carpet in the nest box and it has been working well. They do get some shavings on it
and I shake it out.

 

[kriswrite]

When you say shelf liner, do you mean the sort of rubbery kind? I was wondering about using that but thought the hens might try to eat it.

 

[GammaPoppyLilyFlutter]

I've tried it with two different types of wood shavings, straw, and oat hay. I've found that they all seem to work.

 

[Judy]

Quote:
I've heard of people using the rubbery stuff several times; never heard of anyone running into this problem. Easy to pull out and hose off.

Probably most people on here use a litter of some sort like hay, pine straw, straw, pine shavings -- whatever is convenient. Mine kick pine shavings out and leave hay alone, and those are the two things it's easy for me to get, so I use hay. When pine straw was convenient, I used it. I see them "nest" in it all the time, tromp around and rearrange so there is a hollowed out place. If I put the rubber shelf liner in there, I'd give them some hay or whatever op top of them. Maybe I should -- they do manage to "hollow" down to the bottom and break an egg now and then.

 

[gryeyes]

Quote:
Nope, haven't had that problem with it. Or them. And yes, the rubbery kind, which is so good for so many purposes: opening jars, lining the incubator, lining the brooder (put shavings over it after the second day), and lining nest boxes.

Oh, and lining kitchen shelves, too.