How to get Chickens to lay in an appropriate place.

Good Afternoon Permies!

I have a problem. I have put in a bunch of work building my chicken coop and it has been fantastic so far. I have made four separate laying boxes for when the gal's start producing eggs but they seem rather content to lay in the FARTHEST least accessible corner possible causing me to have to climb into the coop to retrieve eggs. As you could imagine, this has started to get old.

How do I teach the ladies to lay in the boxes so everything can be kept cleaner?

Thanks!

First, the chickens have needs for privacy, quiet, and a bit dark for nest boxes. If your designed nest boxes appear less comfortable than the inaccessible corner of the coop, they will lay there.

Then, one trick is to put plaster eggs in your nest box. Chickens like to lay where there are already eggs.  

If you post a picture or two it would help?

Hans has given you the best trick to get chickens to lay eggs in the nest box.

We had nice brown ceramic eggs which were so realistic that a snake ate one.

Just to put some closure on the thread if anyone sees it in the future. The day I ordered decoy eggs, by some divine intervention the hens just naturally started laying in the boxes. It has been consistently in the boxes for weeks now.

In other news, I have now taken up an interest in painting wooden eggs...

We do have a few misfires from time to time...

A golf ball will also work.

I had some nest boxes for my chickens, and they refused to use them. They always lay in one corner of the coop. Instead of working against what they wanted to do and to try to train a creature with about 2 brain cells, it was a lot easier to just let them lay where they want. I got rid of the nest boxes, and every evening there's a pile of multicolored eggs waiting for me in the corner of the coop.

Timothy Norton wrote:Just to put some closure on the thread if anyone sees it in the future. The day I ordered decoy eggs, by some divine intervention the hens just naturally started laying in the boxes. It has been consistently in the boxes for weeks now.

In other news, I have now taken up an interest in painting wooden eggs...

I wouldn't paint them. They can really come in handy, if a hen goes broody, and you want her to raise your next batch of purchased chicks, and still get to eat those eggs. How? Once you're sure she's gone broody, sneak out and swap the wooden eggs for the real ones. Calculate 21 days from when she started sitting on the nest, and order your chicks to arrive at day 20 or 21. When they come in, wait until she falls asleep, and swap a couple chicks for a couple warmed(I tuck them into my shirt, to warm them, on the way, so their temperature doesn't give up the jig!) eggs, making sure she has an hour or two to get used to live chick's under her, instead of just warm eggs, before you put the next wave of chicks under her. Depending on how many eggs/chicks, it can take a good while, that night - but, I promise, the work exchange of a hen raising babies instead of you raising them is worth one night of little sleep. They can't count, but if the numbers are obviously skewed, some chicks could get rejected, so don't try to stuff a dozen chicks under a hen that's only been sitting on 4 our 5 eggs.

I keep a basket of 10 brown ceramic eggs in my kitchen, as 'decor' - but, every once in a while, they get to experience the incredible warmth of a few weeks under a hens floof. If it's chilly out, when you swap chicks for fake eggs, they make lovely little hand warmers!

Anne Miller wrote:
We had nice brown ceramic eggs which were so realistic that a snake ate one.

I have to replace my "fake eggs" pretty regularly with new ones because I have had snakes and mice eat them. The snakes seem to have learned to constrict them before munching - or something keeps breaking the ceramic eggs!
The mice and other rodents will chew on the ceramic eggs, and sometimes on the golf balls. I now buy them in lots - one large box of whatever cheapest golf balls I can find, or some ceramic or wooden eggs.

As long as they seem roughly egg-shaped, and the right weight, the chickens are happy. The weight seems more important than color or shape/size. The chickens don't seem to mind if they get slightly dinged up or have tooth marks, so things seem to have settled for now.

Timothy Norton wrote:We do have a few misfires from time to time...

I call those *surprise* eggs. Aside from whatever pullets I have coming up, sometimes we all get caught *surprised* when we least expect it.
My older hens are the funniest about it. They either try to make it look like it was intentional by starting to lay eggs in or around that spot for a few days - "I meant to lay my eggs next to the waterer(feed bucket/stairs/AC unit/...)". Or they then get super attentive and spend days just hanging out in the nesting area.

Chickens are funny!