Building Nesting Boxes

We had originally tried using some plastic buckets as nesting boxes. We quickly learned that our girls were much bigger than the buckets and that they couldn't turn around in there. After getting eggs much earlier than we expected, we decided that we needed to actually build our own nesting boxes.

The good news was that we had just remodeled our (once plywood) bedroom with sheet-rock walls. This meant that we had a lot of plywood to work with. Everyone does something different for their hens based on the number of hens they have. I had red 1 nesting box for every 5 hens. That seemed like not enough boxes for my 13 ladies. 

Now for the nitty gritty details. We built 7 boxes that were each about 1 square foot. So it was more like 1 box for every 2 hens (even though they only use 4 of them at the moment). We put a roof on the top of the boxes that was aggressively pitched because we didn't want the hens to sit on top and poo all over their lovely boxes. They have the entire rest of the coop for that. Next, we thought about how we would have to clean out the boxes and how it would be nice to be able to flip the lip on the edge down to easily scoop out. The reason there's a lip to begin with is so that the hay doesn't fall out every time the hens get nested and jump out. To do this, we used three hinges that are pretty sturdy. The hens are all pretty happy and even though they all sleep on their perch, they still spend their mornings in their boxes.