Why do all of my hens lay eggs in the same box?

[B-Goock]

ha ha they just do that. I had 4 nests for 16 birds and they all picked the south west nest as "the best" even thought they are all exactly the same size, same bedding, all south facing. I decided to build a couple new nests on the west side right next to the favorite nest. Now they all use the smaller new nests I built and the favorite is no longer used. Maybe once a month an egg will be in there. The four other nests are only used by 2-3 other hens.

When I partitioned my coop last year to make a brooder I used the south facing nest area and raised them in that area. The couple hens that use those are a couple that were raised in that area.

They do the same thing with the roost. They would all try to fit on one roost bar even though there are other roosts. Exactly same roost bar, same height, same head clearance, same length, same same same. The only difference is the favorite roost is on the north side.

I also tried blocking off the fav nest before ...... eggs laid in front of it. lol

 

[larush]

Our girls do the same thing. We went and bought a couple wooden eggs from the craft store and put them in the vacant boxes, and wouldn't you know it, they started laying in those boxes too. I've even seen fake ceramic eggs at Cracker Barrel before that I thought about trying. My only issue is that the wood eggs are so light that they easily get knocked out of the box, and if there's a wood egg sitting on the ground in front of the boxes... Well guess where I find some of the eggs that day!