A Nesting Box Condominium

My Daughter and I Built this Nesting Box

We have been getting more and more chickens since my daughter and my youngest son have discovered the function of broody hens. Right now we have about 18 chicks. Yes we know it is the wrong time of year for that, but don't tell the hens.

A Buff Orpington

We originally had 24 chickens so we built 6 nesting boxes for them. We eventually ended up with 17 chickens and one rooster. Seven of our pullets turned out to be cockerels. The chickens were large breeds Golden Laced Wyandottes and Buff Orpingtons. We kept a Wyandotte rooster so we now get either pure Wyandottes or a cross that looks like an Orpington with a dark fringe around its tail and some dark feathers on its chest. They are nice looking hens.

A Golden-Laced Wyandotte

We had some extra space so we built two more boxes onto the end of the one group of three boxes and we were up to 8 nesting boxes which seemed like plenty. However, we have added an additional 13 hens from our eggs and broodies, so we wanted to add a few more nesting boxes so we wouldn't end up getting eggs on the floor.

Today's Eggnog

We didn't have much wall space left in the nesting area of the henhouse, so we built a double decker box.We used rough-cut 1 by 12 boards for most of the project. We also used some 1 by 4 boards. We screwed the boxes together with wood screws and mounted it onto a plywood wall in the coop.

A Wyandotte Orpington cross on the porch where she is not permitted.

We like bigger boxes than the standard size you get if you buy from a catalog or feed store. Our boxes are 15 inches wide and 15 inches high. They are 12 inches deep. The opening on the bottom is about nine inches for them to get in and it is only about a 7 inch opening on the top. The top is slanted for the roof. If you don't slant the roof the hens will roost up there and make a mess.

Waiting for a roof

The box hardly cost anything to build. We used one 1 x 12 x12 board and one 1 x 4 x 8 board. We also may have used some scraps left over from the wood pile, but I don't think we used much. The wood is pine from a bandsaw mill up the road from us and costs about half of what it would cost you to get the smoother wood from a Lowes or Home Depot or similar store. It didn't take a lot of screws, and these we had from other projects. I apologize for not being real specific on this, but we usually built stuff like this with whatever we can find on the farm combined with the smallest purchase we need to make to complete it. I know this project cost us less than twenty dollars to complete.

Ready to Install

We worked on it after school off and on for about a week or so. We used a circular saw and a drill. We also used a tape measure and screwdriver and a small t-square. It wasn't an extremely easy project, but it wasn't that hard to build. The final product was not perfectly square but nice and sturdy. We don't want to spend a lot of time on a nesting box- it's not furniture, but it works.

We also had fun making it and now like watching the hens get up into it and lay their eggs. We put hay in the boxes so they can have a nice nest, and we can clean the nest by just pulling the hay out occasionally. We also cut their lay ration sacks into squares that fit in the bottom of the nests, so if we get a broken egg in a nest it is easy to get it out quickly and painlessly.

Built to Last