Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Nesting Box 101
SECOND ONLY IN IMPORTANCE
to your chickens' shelter are their nesting
boxes. A nest box provides both a place for a hen to lay—they prefer laying in dark,
out-of-the-way places—and a convenient place for you to retrieve their eggs. A nest
box also helps to ensure that the eggs will remain clean and unbroken.
A good nest box design is very basic: It has one entrance, it's sheltering (hens like
the protection provided by things like boxes, crates, and buckets turned on their side),
and it's elevated. Also, it should have a small piece of wood for a railing across the
front to keep bedding from sliding out onto the coop floor and to help the birds gain
some footing when jumping up to lay.
Like nearly everything else in the chicken-husbandry world, nesting boxes can be
as simple or as elaborate as you want them to be. My chicken mentor, Diana, used
