whatchyall think about nest boxes

I built my first coop a few years ago before having chickens- needed a place to put chickens, and I built the nest box off some plans I found online. Well, the chickens never used the nest box, and I've always suspected it was too small.

Then we got ducks and they lived in the same coop. The ducks would lay so early in the morning, and then the chickens just wanted their eggs in the same pile, so nobody used the nest box, and it was too high up for the ducks to get into.

Now I'm building a new coop so the chickens can move out on their own without the ducks. For 3 years, I've been half climbing inside the coop every evening to collect eggs- it sucks. Got any ideas on nest box size? Skip the whole thing?

Get you a big metal serving spoon like you see in cafeterias and resteruants, wire that to old broom handle, then skip the boxes just reach down and scoop the eggs up. Grandpa came up with this when grandmas chickens stopped reading the manuals and started laying under the boxes or behind the feeder or in any other out of the way hard to get place.

I LOVE THAT IDEA

Here is the article my mother wrote. We had good luck with these for 20 years.
Mother Earth news nest box article

Nice article

None of my birds use nest boxes. Damn birds. The worst is when you put down the garage door and a peacock egg comes flying at you.

I'd say build a coop you can easily get into so you can hunt eggs.

I ended up putting a nest box in anyway. And I will NOT let those little shits sleep in it this time.

To keep chickens reliably using nests they need to be locked up with them part of the day. We always kept them locked up till noon and turned them loose to forage in the yard for the afternoon. Most of the eggs come in the morning hours and a chicken who is going to lay an egg in the afternoon is kept habituated enough to using the nests that they will nearly always go back to the nests for the occasional afternoon egg. Butcher the rare hen who won't follow those rules.