What to put under pine shavings in nesting boxes?

[Chickadooo]

My hens apparently like to kick out the layer of news paper and shred it for fun. Makes a mess of the boxes. What else should I put under the shavings? I'd like to put something, so when it's time to clean it's easier..

 

[Mosey2003]

My hardware store sells 2x2 carpet tiles, I get a berber type and cut it in 4 pieces and put those underneath. Adds some padding. They're like $2 each.

 

[aart]

I used heavy duty foam backed vinyl flooring...under a tight flake of straw.

 

[IamRainey]

I use excelsior pads that are laminated to brown paper. They last a decent amount of time but eventually come apart and have to be replaced. I don't mind because over time they also get impacted with feathers and the odd bits of poo that I'm happy to be rid of.

They come in bundles of 10.

Strombergs also has these artificial turf alternatives. These are permanent but you have to hose them down to clean them so they're not only more expensive but you'd have to have back ups to substitute for the ones that are drying out.

Ordinarily I'm in favor of a more permanent solution but, since the broken down excelsior ones compost beautifully, that's my choice.

 

[Molpet]

I use feed bags

 

[3riverschick]

Here is Thomas.net's directory of suppliers. I went to one of them and bought a cancelled order of 100 wood wool pads for only 36.00 I think they are 12x12. Excelsior on brown Kraft paper. I use them to line to shipping boxes when I ship birds.


https://www.thomasnet.com/nsearch.h...hx=true&what=Excelsior+(Wood+Wool)&which=prod

 

[imnukensc]

My hens apparently like to kick out the layer of news paper and shred it for fun. Makes a mess of the boxes. What else should I put under the shavings? I'd like to put something, so when it's time to clean it's easier..

Do you have a lip on your nest boxes? My hens don't kick out much nesting material at all. I have pine shavings as a base with a mixture of mostly pine straw with a few leaves mixed in on top of that. I've never cleaned out my nest boxes and replaced everything in over a year. Pick out the occasional poop, but never a complete change out.

 

[Mosey2003]

Do you have a lip on your nest boxes? My hens don't kick out much nesting material at all. I have pine shavings as a base with a mixture of mostly pine straw with a few leaves mixed in on top of that. I've never cleaned out my nest boxes and replaced everything in over a year. Pick out the occasional poop, but never a complete change out.

For me, though my boxes have lips, they would kick out enough shavings to leave the spot in the middle bare wood, so I was getting more cracked eggs than I liked. Thus the carpet tiles, they add padding and they can't get them kicked out of the nests.

 

[Chickadooo]

For me, though my boxes have lips, they would kick out enough shavings to leave the spot in the middle bare wood, so I was getting more cracked eggs than I liked. Thus the carpet tiles, they add padding and they can't get them kicked out of the nests.

I ended up putting a layer of straw for some cushion, and it's really packed in there so hopefully they won't move it around- and I put pine shavings on top of the straw.

 

[Abriana]

I used linoleum on my coop floor--very easy to clean! I've also heard of people using plexiglass to line their nesting boxes.