Patridge bantam chicken poorly foot?

[judith67]

I dont have an eglu i have a wooden coop we built ourselves with 3 nesting boxes in.

 

Day 5

 

Found an egg this morning , on the floor of the coop , clearly been stepped on and no good for eating

What is happening is, I fill the nesting boxes 3 inches deep with straw and paper shreds and also the floor of the coop. Within hours they have s"Ooops, word censored!"ed all the straw onto the floor of the coop leaving a bare and presumably uncomfortable nesting box. Stupid hens!

Does anyone else have this? Any suggestions please?

[Egluntyne]

A rollaway nest box would help.

 

**Here**

 

You would have to rig it up so that it rolled into a safe container.

[moochoo]

Have you tried using a different substrate in the nesting box? My girls hate anything long and stringy that gets around their feet. They just empty the nestbox if I attempt to use shredded paper or straw. I now use Hemcore which cut short. Result! No more empty nestbox!

[judith67]

Well last night i completely emptied the whole coop of straw and paper, and found another egg laid on the floor (but still whole yeah!) it was a tiny brown one so I know I have 2 layers now as my first egg was speckledy.

So i poo picked and put the clean straw back in the nesting boxes and hardly any on the floor at all. When I checked this morning, no eggs anywhere but the straw was mostly still in the boxes.

So i think you maybe right about the paper strands. I will lay off for a while ( shame as its free)