rolohman
Songster
Good morning!
We've had our first 12 eggs from our six chickens - 3-4 of them are laying, we think. About half of the eggs have been stepped on and slightly cracked. The hens go into the nesting boxes (12" cubes) and proceed to scratch scratch scratch until all the wood chips are gone. There is about a 1.5" lip at the front of the nesting box, but they are throwing stuff right out anyway.
My question is - will this behavior calm down once they've all been laying for a bit? Do I need a wider board at the entrance to the nesting boxes? One of those fibrous matts that are harder to scratch up/remove? I'd prefer to have the eggs crack a bit less often, although I'll admit that when I *know* the egg was just laid in the past 10 minutes (I have a camera in there) and the inner membrane wasn't ruptured, I've been tossing them in a pot and eating them anyway. Well-cooked, of course.
We've had our first 12 eggs from our six chickens - 3-4 of them are laying, we think. About half of the eggs have been stepped on and slightly cracked. The hens go into the nesting boxes (12" cubes) and proceed to scratch scratch scratch until all the wood chips are gone. There is about a 1.5" lip at the front of the nesting box, but they are throwing stuff right out anyway.
My question is - will this behavior calm down once they've all been laying for a bit? Do I need a wider board at the entrance to the nesting boxes? One of those fibrous matts that are harder to scratch up/remove? I'd prefer to have the eggs crack a bit less often, although I'll admit that when I *know* the egg was just laid in the past 10 minutes (I have a camera in there) and the inner membrane wasn't ruptured, I've been tossing them in a pot and eating them anyway. Well-cooked, of course.