Winter Nesting

I have often said that most of the work of keeping chickens involves either trying to keep them in where they’re supposed to be or trying to keep them out of where they’re not supposed to be. Chickens are inherently full of mischief, and you can always count on them being up to something you don’t want them to be doing. Over the winter break, we lucked out with some warm, sunny days just perfect for working on projects around the homestead. The chicken coop remodel was at the top of the list for reasons ranging from the old coop being too small to eggs being laid in secret locations in the woods, so we rolled up our sleeves and got down to business. 

We were very fortunate to have an existing coop on the homestead, below the floor of an old outbuilding. It was completely secure and predator-proof with two nice latching doors and heavy duty chicken wire along both sides for ventilation. The issues were that the only perch was way in the back where it was too hard to clean, and it was made from branch rounds too large for the chickens to comfortably perch on. We took the wire off of one side and made a hinged door frame covered in chicken wire, and put in a new perch along that wall. This way, we could just prop the door open and scrape out the soiled straw under the perch. Then we went ahead and replaced the old perch with wooden closet rods, and although it’s still a pain to reach for cleaning underneath it, that side door made it more accessible. We cleaned out and closed up our little coop for the time being, with plans to eventually make a separate bantam area enclosed in a run near the garden, and turned our attention to solving the egg problem.

The girls seemed happy in their spacious coop with a view after the move, but we still weren’t really getting any eggs. We knew they were still laying them somewhere because of the occasional rainstorm when eggs would roll down the hill from the secret nests up in the bushes, and the sound of hens making their egg-laying racket coming from various locations each morning that were not in the direction of the coop. Sigh…The wooden crates set just inside the doorways to the coop didn’t seem to be choice egg laying locations for them, so we removed the chicken wire from one side of the coop and started construction on external nesting boxes with a roof we could open for easy-access egg gathering.

With neither of us being experienced carpenters, every project we do around our place is a learning experience. We learned on this one that having a plan ahead of time is important, and when things don’t fit quite right, you can always backtrack or use chisels.

We made the door for egg collection in two parts so it wouldn’t be too heavy to open and stapled on some spare roofing shingles we found out in one of the sheds. This was divided into four nesting boxes on the inside so there would still be plenty of enticing places to lay eggs if a box or two were occupied. I stuck a ceramic egg from the feed store in two of them to really get the message across and some dried lavender to make them fragrant and inviting.

When it was all said and done we stood back and were pretty pleased with our work. It’s heavy and hurky, but 100% functional and probably bear proof.

I would be fooling myself if I declared our egg problems over, but we made a big step in the right direction. And we picked up some building skills along the way.