Patridge bantam chicken poorly foot?

[Hen Watch]

At 11am today, and 11am Sunday and once last week my chooks all started bok boking really noisily and just would not stop. The noise was awful and went on for 15 mins and even a blast with the hose only stopped them for a few mins.

 

Anyway today I noticed that it started again at 11am when a queue was forming for the nest box with 2 girls pacing up and down the run noisily whilst one was laying. Not sure why this should start up now after 1 year of hen keeping. But 3 noisy days close together all at 11am is a bit of a worrying trend.

 

So my thought is how am I going to solve the nestbox queue? The eglu only has 1 nestbox and I have 4 hens.

 

So, have any of you added any extra nestbox space to an eglu and if so what???

 

I've been out today and bought a 14x9.5 inch, heavy oven ceramic dish which I've put Auboise in. It's only 3" deep and I hope that doesn't put them off as the eglu nestbox is very deep. Thought I'd leave it in overnight today to get used to it. Will reduce their roosting space but 1 sleeps in the nestbox anyway so hope that's OK.

 

Any ideas?

 

PS. Since 11am they've all laid and they've been quite as mice since???

[cluckbok]

How about a childs' potty, that's quite deep. We put one of those in our eglu, tho none of ours laid in it, it was only to shut our semi broody up!! We filled ours with shredded paper.

[Chooks Aloud]

I too had this problem. They all want to lay at the same time. I tried turning bowls upside down and making extra nesting boxes which I put under the eglu - they didn't want to know.

 

Now what I do is I take the back roosting bars out during the day leaving just the aubiose in the bottom. The chooks are quite happy to sit and lay together now there is room in the eglu, with one on the nest and the rest at the back.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Karen

[Egluntyne]

I've been out today and bought a 14x9.5 inch, heavy oven ceramic dish which I've put Auboise in. It's only 3" deep and I hope that doesn't put them off as the eglu nestbox is very deep. Thought I'd leave it in overnight today to get used to it. Will reduce their roosting space but 1 sleeps in the nestbox anyway so hope that's OK

 

It should do the trick. You could always put it in a cardboard box with opening in the run.....if the run is covered.

[Hen Watch]

Thank you all for these suggestions - they are most helpful.

 

This morning I put one of yesterday's eggs on the aubiose in the oven dish. Unfortunately I had to go out this morning, so I have no idea if the noise happened again today or not.

 

But when I got back 2 eggs had been laid in the oven dish and the eglu nestbox was empty. So seems like they approve.

 

So I kept 1 egg in the oven dish again as encouragement. Checked this afternoon and there were 2 eggs in the eglu nestbox and an empty oven dish . So whoever laid the egg in the eglu box had carefully rolled the oven dish egg over the dish lip, and plopped it 2 inches down into the eglu nestbox without breaking it....

[Bohochic]

How strange....