Why is she doing this?

[SarahC86]

I have a bard rock pullett who has just started to lay about 3 months ago, for a long time she use to lay next to a bale of straw now she is laying in her food. how can i get her to stop and lay in her nesting box. I have a golfball in there now which has worked for my other birds. help please!

Sarah

 

[missnu01]

ha ha aha haa... I just had 4 pullets start laying, and the first few eggs were wherever they fell out. The next week all the chickens were laying in the 2 designated nest boxes...then all the pullets have started getting creative in making new nesting spots. I don't know why, but one made a nest in the top of a bale of hay on top of a stack of hay bales...it was so cute. the bale are stacked against one wall 3 bales high, so I walk in and about head level I see just a chicken's head...she had covered her whole back in straw...so all you saw was the head sticking out of the hay...anyway a couple of the pullets used that one for a couple days, and for the past few days all but one chicken has been laying in a nest they hollowed out on one side of the coop. I do notice that one of the pullets seems to get upset when I take the eggs, so perhaps she is contemplating going broody...my husband told me to stop taking the eggs after I gathered the ones in the hay bale. he said after I came back in with the eggs that the little pullet came back and hopped up on the hay bales and then started clucking up a storm and then her little rooster came and he said that they sounded definitely upset and that I should stop taking their eggs...
They are barnyard mix bantams and I don't really have any use for small chickens. I like big eggs, and chickens I can eat...

Is it possible that she really really needed to lay an egg one day but another hen was on the nest so she found her own spot..? I think that is what happened in my coop. I have one hen that likes to monopolize the favorite nest box for an hour or more before she actually lays and leaves the nest...sometimes longer. She sits and sits and sits, and then adjusts whatever egg she may have laid, and then she'll sit a little longer, then finally she gets up and moves. I do notice that her egg is the only one ending up in the nest box consistently...so I think that for whatever reason the other nest box isn't good enough, and the one hen is staying in the nest too long so the other pullets go find their own places. as long as they are laying in the coop I don't care where really. As long as it isn't in the middle of the floor or on the stairs...( I have found one pullet egg on the stairs, and that is not a good place...)

 

[Chambertin]

Some girls imprint on a certian area.
Many will say to try to leave dummy eggs, real eggs, or make it hard to get into the offending area.

Usually that works, other times they are just crazy chickens.
One of our silkies plucked her belly bare, sits on the same spot every day, and lays a new egg every day.
Its on top of a brick we have in the balcony...
She will sit on every egg she lays, but then go back to the coop at the end of the day. Come back and egg or no egg lay on the same spot and desperatly try to keep an egg warm, an egg on a brick!

Poor girl gets triple points for trying, but just doesnt seem to understand you cant go broody and lay eggs.
Plus she will not follow any other girls into the nests, even if the other girls try to teach her she just wont listen.
That's her brick and her way of doing it.

Our other chicken had to lay an egg on my desk every day.
She would peck the door until we let her in, wouldnt lay if we didnt. Luckily the novelty wore off and she followed suit with the other girls in the nest box. Still it was a funny 3 weeks of desk eggs.