The babies are growing up. All 13 survivors are apparently female, to the regret of Landlady who was hoping for one accidental cock bird. Things seem to go better, at least with small flocks, on those rare occasions when the hens have a cock who doesn’t push them around and act like an asshole all the time. In my admittedly limited experience so far that’s about one cock in twelve. Seymour, for example, actually does break up fights and call them together when tidbits are in the offing, and he puts himself between them and scary things. The hens really do seem happier and marginally less neurotic when the flock has a rooster.
But whatever, hopefully it won’t be long before they start feeling the urge to lay practice eggs. And I hung on to some scrap for making their nesting boxes, and today seemed a good day to do it.
And I was very pleased with the way it was knocking together until right at the end, when I realized I had cut a piece of OSB to serve as a slanting roof, to keep the hens from sitting on top and crapping into the boxes…
…and then I forgot what it was for and cut it up for dividers. So I found a piece of one-by that will keep them from sitting on the roof but I’m not sure it’s wide enough. We’ll see, I may have to go looking for a wider piece of scrap. But other than that, and the fact that I need to bring some straw from the Fortress of Attitude to give them the right idea, it’s ready for cradle duty.
Three nest boxes for 13 hens? Hmmm… I suspect you need a few more boxes. 🙂
If I do I’ll build more, but they tend to share.
Yes, they’ll share, but unless you intend to gather eggs constantly, you run the risk of broken eggs as the next “shift” steps on them. I had around 15 to 20 hens most of the time, and our 12 boxes were stacked three high. I tended them every day, often two or three times, cleaning some and collecting eggs, and still had a stepped on egg once in a while when I had the most hens. They tend to want to lay their eggs all about the same time, or at least they did for me. I always wanted the kind of nest box where the egg rolled out the back into a trough, and out of the way of their feet. But I had what I had.
The hens will roost on the dividers…or at least mine did. I had broken egg issues, too. Mine for some reason all favored the same nest in the box. I have no idea why that one was so special because the other two nests in the box were identical as far as I could tell.