WILL they go to the boxes to lay?

[tankernav1]

So my 8 hens sound like a women's church group at night as they are deciding who is going to roost next to who on the tree branch. So we definitely don't have a problem with sleeping on the roost. They free range every evening when my outdoor cats come in for the night but are up on the roost by dusk. However we have a coop with the built in "upstairs" with the plank going up and then an upstairs area with 2 nesting boxes. I dont think they have ever gone up there except when they were young and got lost when we first put them in the coop. You would hear them clucking and realize they couldn't get back down. They will be 17 weeks old on Tuesday and I'm now wondering if they will lay their eggs up there or any place on the bottom of the coop. Do they figure this out? I hope so. So far everything has been going great. This is our first experience!

 

[cmom]

I put golf balls in my nest boxes. They lay in them faithfully. If they don't go to the area of the nest boxes you may want to put them there. My birds mostly lay in the mornings to early afternoons. They also prefer certain nest boxes.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Tweety, my BO, laid her first egg today. I knew she was going to since she was making a lot of chatter. Then she started going back and forth to the coop. I guess she didn't make it back to the coop cuz I found the egg under the apple tree. Hopefully she now knows what's going on and makes it to the nesting box.