Kitchen Garden Forum

weve got 7 chickens with eight nestboxes, this morning there were five eggs all in one nestbox, there are china eggs scattered round the other boxes and they seem to poo in all the boxes. , t'other day when we had seven eggs they were scattered about a bit amongst several boxes, perhaps it was just a cold night last night ?

You're lucky to get 5, so don't complain what nestboxes they're in. We have 8 layers and 11 POL and get 2+ eggs at the moment!

Hi Richard

If I remember correctly the usual advice is to provide one nestbox for every 5 or 6 hens. So maybe it's not surprising that seven of yours are going unused. Hens naturally lay where there are other eggs in order to produce (so they think) a clutch for a broody to eventually sit on. Poultry are sociable birds and hatch anyone's eggs when the time comes. You obviously know this if you have pot eggs in the boxes. I've only ever found pot eggs to fool the most determined broodies - and they'd try to hatch golf balls or doorknobs given half a chance. I'm sure the laying hen chooses the warm, freshly-laid egg/s to add her contrubution to.

As Jane suggests, Give thanks and keep eating the eggs.

this morning it was one large egg in a pile of fertiliser on top of the nest boxes. hopefully there will be more later , been averaging 4 to 5 this week , one day last week there were seven so presumably they are all laying at least occasionally.
i put 8 boxes in thinking ex battery birds would probably be happiest with a little box each rather than perching in the wide open space of a 6x4 shed , but they have acclimatised rather well, we had to separate one off for a few days to find her feet but she can run as fast as the others now. i was amazed how quickly they all started pecking at greens and actually scratching in the grass, soon as they were let in the polytunnel they all dug holes and started dust bathing, must be some sort of deeply embedded chicken genetic memory cos they wont ever have been able to do it in their battery cages.

That's a lovely post - ex battery hens dust-bathing and giving you eggs in return. I think I'd better have severe words with my hens. They don't know how lucky they are - free range and only 2 eggs! Actually there could be more because I strongly suspect one is laying in the pig ark, but for obvious reasons I never get to see that one. I'm going to have to do something about my egg eating hen though. Someone suggested a decoy egg with mustard.