Hen Nesting Boxes
Hen nesting boxes are a way of organizing your hens and their business of egg-laying. If you do not provide nesting boxes, you could find eggs everywhere as if you were at an “Easter Egg Hunt”. You wouldn’t know where they were laid, or how fresh they were.
Organize your chicken coop with nesting boxes on one side, inside the chicken coop. Hens will inately seek a nesting box to be quiet, and finish the process of laying their egg. Nesting boxes afford them a quiet, clean space to relax, and lay their egg undisturbed..
I have six nesting boxes in my chicken coop, in two rows of three. The first row is mounted off of the chicken coop floor at 18″, and the second row begins at 36″ off of the chicken coop floor. My nesting boxes are a little larger than is necessary because I have the room and my chickens are the larger, heavier breeds. In the photos, my nesting boxes are 16″ wide, 14″ deep, and heights at 18″ high and 12″ high, respectively.
Julia In A Nesting Box Laying An Egg
Make sure your nesting boxes are secured to hold the weight of several hens. A minimum size for nesting boxes is 12″w x 12″d x 12″h. If you have the room, make your nesting boxes a little larger for your hens. Nesting boxes can be make out of plywood. I have seen vintage metal hen nesting boxes, that come as one piece or row, at flea markets. The nesting box is open on one side where the hen enters and lays down. Create a little lip on the front of each nesting box so the hen has something to grip on when entering her nesting box, and to prevent eggs from rolling out.
Dry fresh bedding consisting of straw or pine shavings will be comfortable for laying hens, and keep their eggs clean and secure until they are collected. Rotate bedding out on a regular basis to the manure box, for instance, or your compost pile. Hens do not normally dirty their nesting boxes, but clean out any manure droppings, or if an egg has somehow cracked and broken open in the nesting boxes. Broken eggs can attract ants.
Nesting Boxes Positioned Off Of Floor & Along One Side of Coop
Each hen does not lay at the same time, so you do not need to provide a nesting box for every single hen. A rule of thumb I like is to provide at least one nesting box for every 3 hens in your flock. Sometimes you might have a few social hens using one nesting box together. Also, you might find you have a clutch of eggs in one nesting box that several hens have used, one after another.
If you like, you can even track your egg production by writing in a notebook or a journal how many eggs per day you collected, and any other observations. Try and follow a routine for yourself and your hens, by collecting your eggs about the same time each morning or each evening.
Collect your eggs every day from your nesting boxes, either with a nice somewhat insulated basket or even with recycled egg cartons. Be careful not to “clang” your eggs together. Freshly laid eggs are remarkable. They come complete with an invisible protective coating from the hen that keeps them fresh. For that reason, you should not wash or rinse your eggs, unless they have a bit of manure on them. Collected eggs are ready for your refrigerator to keep until you are ready to eat, cook, or bake with them.
{ 80 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello how are you doing my name is larrt mike pls i will like to know of you have hen coops for sell i will like to know the cost of it plux the tax and get back to me i will be waiting to hear from you very soon
Hello,
I don’t have chicken coops for sale or plans, but there are “google” ads at the end of every one of my “chicken posts” with information for what you are looking for.
Thanks for asking.
VintageGardenGal
You have some beautiful chickens!
Thank you for your kind words….VintageGardenGal
Your information and pictures of your chickens are wonderful and very helpful. Thank you. I am a beginner in raising my chickens and looking for all the help i can get.
Thanks for your great comment! VintageGardenGal
Wow! Julia is beautiful, we are just finishing building my chicken coop, will get my girls next week, i am very excited.your site has been very helpful thank you.
Welcome to the world of chickens! It is so much fun. Thanks for your wonderful comment…VintageGardenGal.
hi again bonnie, i’am getting 6 hens, i also wanted to get a rooster.if i want eggs no chicks can i house them together? thank you for all your wonderful help.
Hilda, If you house a rooster with your hens, you are going to get fertile eggs, and your hens will want to sit on their eggs to brood, and hatch their eggs.
There is no getting around that. If you don’t want chicks, I suggest no rooster. Sorry….Thanks for your great comment….VintageGardenGal.
thank you bonnie,at least i know now. i just though it would be nice to hear someone else crow other than the hubby, lol.
Loved your comment…go girl! VintageGardenGal
I enjoyed your site very much…My wife and I farm and she keeps a dozen hens. We’d like to know what breed your Julia hen pictured above is.?.? She reminds her of a pet hen she had as child. Thanks!
Todd,
Julia is an Ameraucana hen. She is a very sweet hen, and lays gray/blue eggs. I highly recommend this breed. She was still laying a few eggs this spring at seven years old. Thank you for your kind comment…VintageGardenGal.
Dear Vintage Garden Gal,
I want to thank you for your tips I am trying desperately to take care of chickens which I have never done before. thay are great fun but mean while I’m trying to figure out a way to build a cheap hen house for them. We really don’t have the money but a neighbor has given us some wood. Oh your probably wondering, if you can’t afford to build a house for them why have them? They were given to us by a neighbor who bought them and her spouse said she could not have them. But we have fallen in love with them watching them grow. we have been using a rabbit house that we fenced in. so thank you. everything weve tried on the internet for info wants money. so thanks.
Kelli, I always say there are two kinds of people in this world, chicken people and non-chicken people. You are a chicken person! Welcome to the world of chickens. Thanks for your great comment….VintageGardenGal.
Thank you for all the information on here! You’ve just inspired me to make my nesting boxes out of a redundant shelving unit. I can’t wait to get my girls next week. Chickens are the way forward!
Go girl….thanks for your great comment….VintageGardenGal.
where could I purchase these nesting boxes??? thanks
my husband built a new coop for our 3 chickens, but they are not going into it at dusk. They have needed our help to find it and then they go in. Do you have a tip or suggestion in this situation? Thanks!
Paula, are your chickens young? Sometimes if they are young, and have not had an “older hen” show them the ropes, they might be a little confused. Also, because it is a new chicken coop, they might be a little confused about their new environment. Try keeping them in their coop, and outside protected pen if you have one for about a week, and then start letting them out first in late afternoon, and then gradually whatever time you want to let them out. They should then try and return to their chicken coop at dusk.
Another suggestion, is give them a treat of lettuce or something they like around the same time of day or early evening. They will become trained to come close to their coop each day for their treat. Thanks for your great question…VintageGardenGal
Sherry, nesting boxes are something that can easily be made by handyman or a carpenter. Do you know someone who might be able to make them, maybe in exchange for fresh eggs, etc. Two other options are to look for nesting boxes at your local feed store for sale, and possibly flea markets. Sometimes you can actually find vintage nesting boxes which are terrific at flea markets. Things to consider if you are not making custom nesting boxes, will your nesting boxes fit in your chicken coop properly for your hens, and is your door or opening to your chicken coop big enough to get them into your chicken coop. Thanks for your great question…VintageGardenGal
please send me anything now for I m diving into my first coop this spring thanks steve
Steve, I suggest that you read my entire “chicken category” for starts, and follow this blog regularly. Thanks for your great comment…VintageGardenGal
Your nesting boxes look a bit like ours, only ours is eight .ft long w/ six nesting cubbies. Any tips on easy cleaning with the lip in the front?
Rebecca, if my nesting boxes get dirty or the bedding needs to be changed, I just use a garden trowel and an empty bucket to clean out, and put on my coop floor, or the compost pile. Remember I use fresh bedding in the nesting boxes first, then rotate to the chicken coop floor, and then transfer to my manure box.
Thanks for your great comment….VintageGardenGal
You coop looks so clean and the nests are nice too. I only have 4 chickens and don’t use shavings like that. I use straw or shredded paper sometimes.
My chickens make such a mess and toss all the bedding material all over the place. How do you keep them from doing this?
Doug, I found straw was messy for me, and harder for my composting purposes. Just experiment on what works best for you. I use the pine shavings that I get from my local feed store in a big compressed bale bagged. I clean my chicken coop every morning, at least the manure box. Also, I have two hens that are now 7 years old, and then recently two hens that are one year old. The younger hens are more active in the coop and outside pen, so now things are a bit more messy. Age of your hens, if younger will be flapping, jumping around, and more active making things messy. I suggest you follow a cleaning routine in your coop, and it makes it a little easier to keep clean. Thanks for your great comment….VintageGardenGal.
Thank you Bonnie.
Yes, my 4 girls are just babies, less than a year and they just started laying. So yes, they are as you say. very active and mess things up.
so yes, need to keep it clean.
I will also look into shavings.
Thanks
Hi Bonnie me agin where is the best place to keep there feed and water inside or outside?
Steve, I have a water source hanging outside at all times, and one inside my coop set on one level of bricks. It is out of the way of the nesting boxes and roost, but accessible for my hens. At night, when I close up my hens at night, I bring their chicken feed bucket inside, out of the night moisture and away from the lure of rodents. The chicken feed bucket goes on another set of bricks on the chicken coop floor for the night.
I have two sources of water at all times, in case one would run dry or become defective. I use one feed bucket, and bring it out and hang it in the outside pen in the morning, weather permitting, and then bring it in at night, and place on its bricks.
The key points with feed and water buckets for chickens, is that they are clean and available to them. Thanks for your great question…VintageGardenGal
thank u so much for the info hope to talk agin steve
Hi Bonnie,
Should a broody hen be separated from the other hens while she is sitting on eggs … and will she leave her nest to feed, or do I have to feed her separately. Macy
Macy, no you don’t normally need to separate a broody hen. In my experience, broody hens don’t eat much, and actually can get thin. They almost go into a trance or a state. They are fine staying with their flock. I would actually pick my hen up and carry her over to her feed bucket, so she could eat a bit. Make her walk around a little. Thanks for your great comment…VintageGardenGal
I have been searching for a long time and this is the first (and only so far) site I’ve found that properly explains how many nesting boxes I’m going to need per hen and why. I’m about to start collecting materials to build my hen house, I currently have two little Pekin bantams that were given to me, (hen and rooster) and their two baby chics that are being raised by an on-loan broody surrogate mother. They currently live happily roaming my yard and sleep in an old drum with straw base, with surrogate mother and chics in a former rabbit hutch, and I need to quickly build them something more suitable. I was stressing about how many nesting boxes I would need in my design for egg laying once I’m no longer trying to raise babies – your site has answered my question. Thank you for having such good information available here.
Lili, have fun with your chickens and new chicken coop. Thanks for your kind words….VintageGardenGal
Thank you so very much Bonnie,for the advise about feeding my broody hen, she had a quick feed and walk around yesterday evening. How often should I disturb her to feed?…. Macy
Macy, just when you are down to check on your hens, once or twice a day, nothing like a routine. She’ll be fine. Glad to help…VintageGardenGal
Hi – this is a wonderful website and a very informative blog. I am planning on turning an old shed on our property into a henhouse. This shed has insulation and exposed tar-paper on the inside. I think this would certainly help the hens in the winter, but I am concerned that they might get into the insulation or peck at the tar paper….should this be a concern? Is it worth it to leave the insulation and add a layer of wood along the entire interior?….thanks so much! Aurora
Aurora, not sure where you are located but it sounds like it is cold in the winter. Chickens would need insulation in their chicken coop, and maybe a heat source. Yes, I would add a layer of non-treated plywood to your interior to further protect your chickens. Yes, you would want to protect them from nails jutting out, tar paper, and unknowns. Thanks for your great comment….VintageGardenGal.
Hello, I am wondering how high is to high for my nesting boxes, I have the bottom row of three at about 36″ and the second row of three at 48″, do you feel this is too high?
Also, I have 3 brown hens, 3 black and 6 leghorns, 1 Plymouth Rock rooster and a brown rooster, will any of them eat the others eggs? Or will the roosters eat them? That is why I put the nesting boxes at the height I did. They are 16 weeks old and have not started laying just yet, I assume at about 20 weeks they will start.
One more question, is it a good idea to have two roosters? I was told they will fight.
Thank You so much, Deats
David, I have 2 rows of nesting boxes, one at 18″ and the second at 36″ from the coop floor. I feel your nesting boxes at 48″ are getting too high. The older your hens get, the less they will want to go for high nesting boxes. Normally, you shouldn’t have a problem with any of them eating eggs. Sometimes hens, lower in the pecking order will have their eggs pecked or cracked. It is something you shouldn’t worry about. Young hens start laying at about 6 months old. Two roosters might fight, if they have been raised together there might be less of a chance of them fighting. It really depends on your roosters. Your hens might suffer a bit with 2 roosters, the roosters might be rough on them to the point where they don’t have feathers on their back, if you know what I mean….Thanks for your great questions…VintageGardenGal
hello Bonnie I built my coo0p 5 ft by 8 feet and followed your advice on the hight of the nest 18 in and 36 ins do I sill need ramps for them to geet up or can thay hop up. thank u
Steve, your hens will be able to hop into their nesting boxes without a ramp. They do a quick hop and/or sometimes a flutter with their wings. It helps to have that little ledge or lip in the front of their nesting boxes for them to grab on, just like I described in my “nesting box” post. Thanks for your great question….VintageGardenGal
Hi Bonnie, My husband and I jusy moved to our second home in the North Georgia Blue Ridge Mountains. We have 4 hens 2 Jersey Giants and 2 Golden Lace Wyandottes about 16 weeks old. The girls are all doing just fine since my husband and I finished a chicken coop. We built it on our front porch and it is 10′ x 8′ wide x 6′ high. It has chucken wire for a roof but our porch is roofed. Our front porch is 50 feet long and we wanted to have their coop close to us so we and our two mini longhaired daschunds could interact with them all of the time. We have placed three small bales of hay at different heights, in there so they can have places to scratch and play hide and seek, we just finished today a roost and it is hanging above one of the bales of hay. We have made a nesting box and placed a large plastic flower pot saucer in it filled with hay. I like your use of shavings. Are these like the type you use for other small animals? Like rabbits or hamsters? Do the shavings need to be plain pine or can they be cedar or something like that?
My most important question is when should we place the nesting box inside the coop? I have heard that too early and they will take up sleeping in there. So far they like hiding in their hay to sleep and haven’t started using their roost. Is this OK?
Here in the mountains we have many predators. We have only let the girls run around on the porch and under the porch, as we saw a 400-500 pound bear in our back woods behind the house a week ago. We live on the top of the downside of the mountain and have 3 additional acres behind the house. We are a little concerned as to how we can keep the girls really close to the house. Any ideas?
Also it does get cold up here low 30’s, but it does not snow. We have placed a heater outside the coop facing into the coop but aren;t sure if this is really needed. Again we have been told that these are hardy birds, and perhaps that is why they like the hay we have in there for them. Any suggestions about this situation.
I could probably go on and on. We have just fallen in love with them and they are called the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Chicks” and they are each named after my Mother-in Law and her three sisters!
PS our pups love rounding the girls up and trying to keep them together.
We never dreamed that moving from a 3 million person city to such a pristine wilderness would hold all these magnificent times for us and I Never would have deamed I would ever own chickens that actuall come running to us and sit on our shoulders!
I now this is long but I hope you enjoy reading it and have some answers for us we really want to do what is best for the “sisters”
Nice nest box. thanks.
Your information is very interesting. I, too, am recently struggling with hens that are roosting in the nesting boxes and pulling everything out of them…I’m constantly refreshing the straw and even tried pine shavings but they keep pulling them out.
We also built our coop first and then then chicken run. We have 29 hens but only 9-11 go out into the run, the rest won’t even attempt it. Any suggestions? Thanks, Cindy
Cindy, chickens are creatures of habit. You can try and feed them treats daily such as lettuce, apples, chard, in their outside pen to coax them out. Do you have a feed bucket you put in the outside pen now? If they have a feed source, they will usually gravitate to the feed bucket. Do you have a door from the chicken coop to the outside pen? You can try and herd them all out to the outside pen, close the door, and keep them all outside for a few hours together daily, too. Although, if your hens are laying, they will want to go to their nesting box. Thanks for your comment….VintageGardenGal
Susan, wow, sounds like you have a new adventure with your chickens and all. I use pine shavings for my chickens, the same type you use for hamsters and guinea pigs. I have not seen cedar shavings, but I’m thinking they would be more expensive in a bale size. Also, I would have to research how welll cedar shavings works for composting. Young hens start laying around six months old, so you can wait and put in your nesting boxes later. Personally, I like to let my hens get acquainted with their nesting boxes as part of their chicken coop from the get-go.
Chickens can tolerate cold much better than heat, but it has to be a dry cold. They do not do well with cold and dampness at all. I have never had hens in cold weather, so best to check with your local feed store or other poultry enthusiasts in your area, about keeping your hens safe and warm.
You know that no amount of chicken wire is going to keep out a bear. My you are brave. Try your coop on your porch. If you have predators continuously, you might have to build a more contained reinforced building with an optional outside pen.
Welcome to the “joy of chickens”. I loved hearing about your girls. Thanks for your lovely comment…VintageGardenGal
I inherited 3 hens last week and built a tractor coop for them with an 8 foot run. The lady I picked them up from said they had just started laying. It’s been 6 days without a single egg. Is this normal & when can I expect them to begin laying again?