Back in May we put together nesting boxes for the chickens, from a kit. The chickens haven’t started to lay yet, but they look full grown to me (bearing in mind that I still know less-than-nothing about chickens). We have at least one rooster, who has already had to fight off a mongoose.
The problem is that the chickens have decided that they like hanging out on top of the nesting boxes more than inside them. They poop up there (well, they poop everywhere but when they poop in the nesting boxes at least we can change the straw). Worse, should they start laying up there, the eggs will fall a ways to the egg collection troughs or to the ground. Either way, they’re likely to break and that does no good for anyone.
We’ve decided to try wire bird spikes to discourage them from hanging out on the top. I didn’t put many in, but I’m hoping it will be annoying enough to encourage them to nest inside the boxes.
We will see.
—2p
addendum 20250814@18:51
I wanted to just discourage the chickens from nesting on top of the boxes, not lay down broken glass and concertina wire. Apparently, they really like the top of the nesting boxes. I only put one fastener in each of the three spike strips, and they just get up there and turn them sideways and try to nest anyway. Looks as though I’m going to have to add more strips and anchor them in two places each.