[JohnRKaye]

Hi.  One of our girls has started to lay anywhere except the nesting box.  Can anyone suggest how to deal with this?

[New shoot]

I've split this off into its own thread John

[danfinn1]

Occasionally I have come home at lunch time to find an egg in the run. I had to crawl through the eglu to get it. My guess was one of the others had kicked it out when laying.

However, when I brought them back last October from their 10 day holiday they seemed to lose direction and Beryl made a nest under the hedge and laid there. She was ok the next day as she would have got her bearings back then

[treecol]

One of ours is having trouble in this area. She's either laying soft shells under the perches ( which are screwed to the top of a chest of drawers) or as it was yestday, just dropped on the sawdust on the floor of their summerhouse. She's only once laid a rough shelled egg in a nesting box.
At the moment I'm more concerned that she lays good shells, but I do leave the eggs in the nests so they all get the idea. Some days they are all in one, other days spread about. You can buy great rubber eggs on Ebay - I've always been led to believe they will encourage the hens to use the boxes.
Just a thought, are there enough boxes per hens?  Are any other birds bothering her in the nest boxes? For the 1st week, mine couldn't  leave each other alone when they were in the nests. But that has settled down as they've got used to things.

[Sassy]

One nest box per 4 to 5 hens is usual but often they all only use one nest box regardless and will sit on top of each other. They generally sort it all out though 

[JohnRKaye]

We've had Lily over a year now and have three other hens and up until recently she has always laid in the nest box. Some days she still does but then other days it could be anywhere in the run. It looks as though she's just dropped it out as there's no sign of her making a nest. It's a perfect egg not soft shell.

[Sassy]

Just a thought, are they happy to go to bed at night?

[JohnRKaye]

No probs at all going to bed 

[Sassy]

That's great, just wondering about red mite as this will make them reluctant to go to bed!