DIY Roll-Away Nesting Boxes

hi I'm DIY Todd and today we're going to learn how to make a rolling a nesting box [Music] [Music] in the last couple years I just started raising chickens and I'm up to about 24 right now and I've ran into a problem here recently and I'm gonna have to take care of it I found and I haven't found the chicken but I found out that they're eating their eggs you know if you're thinking about getting chickens this is pretty common okay so one thing that it could be is they're not getting enough protein in their feed or they're not getting enough calcium and they'll eat this shell along with it so one thing you could do is put Easter cells a little bowl of it out there which I've tried okay so they're getting enough calcium it could be enough protein in their food so I'm going to move them up to a higher percentage of protein feed okay so that should work but one thing I want to do before I take them to the processor you know just get rid of them is try to solve this issue doing what they call a rollaway egg nesting box and basically what this is is where the egg after they lay it rolls down basically an incline and underneath a piece of wood which what we're going to use and covers the egg to where the chicken get can't get to it to eat it okay so that's what we're gonna try to create a rollaway nesting box so I'm using a half inch sheet of plywood to make these nesting boxes and the first thing we need to do is cut down two pieces for the back part of the nesting box as you can see here my workshops a little tight but I managed to get them cut now that we have the backs cut we need to start cutting the bottom and the first thing that you want to do is make sure that your paint tray fits on the bottom and that's what I'm gonna do right here once you know that it fits you can go ahead and cut the second piece now that we have the front and the back scut we need to come down for the front lip that we're going to fasten the lid onto so we can lift up and get our eggs so that's what these small pieces are and those are the height of your paint tray and maybe just a little bit higher so make sure you add just a little bit of gap so it can close naturally now that we have the front back and the lip done are starting to cut the pieces that are going to be the partitions in between each nesting box so make sure that when you cut these you make enough that's going to go in between two so on this one I needed five partitions one on each end and three in the middle that would give me four nesting boxes so I need a total of ten now that we have all the plywood cut we're going to start assembling our nesting boxes I'm going to use glue and Brad nails for this process I'm going to use clamps to hold the ends together so it doesn't move on me and it's easier to work with but as you can see my plywood is bowed up in the middle and if it was anything else I would worry about it but nesting boxes I don't care the only thing I'm going to do here when I shoot the Brad nails in I'm just going to push down on the middle and then shoot the Brad nail in there once I do that as you can see it stays flat and I don't have to worry about it again but once you finish all of this the most important step is to make sure that your paint tray sets into the bottom with your back on it so we're going to put on the sides and the partitions and I'm starting with the left side here and I'm just going to use glue and Brad nails to hold it together and I'm going to use a clamp to hold it in place so I'm shooting the bottom and the back at the same time here I'm using a framing square to draw lines to keep the partition square with the rest of the partitions I would highly recommend doing this so you don't get off-center and then your paint tray does not fit in between there again I'm using a clamp to hold it together and then I end up using the framing square to draw a line down the back so I can shoot the Brad nails in the back so as you can see here I've made a mistake and I've missed my line on the back and shot the Brad nails off to the side if you do that just use a pair of needlenose to wiggle them and break them off I'd like doing it as the project goes so I remember where they're at and I can get rid of them right away I don't want these poking the chickens at all now that we have all those nails pulled out from my mistake it's time to add the third partition and making sure they're squared again using that framing square as you can see here my paint tray is in there to make sure it fits snugly the way I would like the last step in building these partitions is adding the right side and I'm doing that the same way I did the left just using a clamp and Brad nails and glue to put them in place now that we're wrapping up the partitions and the right side we're going to move to the front lip and we're going to attach that using glue and Brad nails now as you can see here I'm going to be using a lot of clamps and that's because that small of a piece of plywood tends to bend a lot and I want to hold it in place now this lip is going to give us a place to mount the hinges for our lid that's going to cover up the bottom of the paint tray now if you don't worry about putting a lid on there then you don't need to put this lip on but I want to make sure that I cover that area so the chickens don't get to the eggs now that we have the front lip put on our nesting box it's time to wipe off the excess glue now not gonna be sanding this so I wanted to make sure I just get the glue off so the chickens don't pick at it the next thing is to make sure that your paint trays fit inside of each nesting box here now that we have the lip on I wanted to put these hinges on but the lip was a little bit too wobbly so if you noticed I put a spacer between the partitions and the lip and it gave it more support then when I put the hinge on I measured in two inches from the end for our first hinge the middle partition is exactly right in the middle of our nesting box so I had to offset the middle hinge just a little bit but it didn't affect the overall operation of that lid now of course you always seem to drop a screw and I spent a little bit time looking for it never could find it turns out it was right underneath where I was standing and that always makes you mad when I wrapped up the hinge two inches from the other end and then we were ready to attach the lid to the nesting box again I pre-drilled all these holes and then put the normal screws in now one thing that I did find out was that these screws were made for a three-quarter inch and we are using a half-inch so I just grabbed my dremel with a cut off wheel on it and then cut off all the screws that were extending past the plywood it was no big deal as you can see the little black streaks were just the smoke or the debris that came off cutting each screw don't forget the inside of the nesting boxes even though the chicken shouldn't get to those I wanted to make sure nothing stuck the paint trays at all next I just tested my paint trays in there and got the lid placed and we were ready now it's time to move on getting our paint trays ready so I used outdoor carpeting for the base of our paint trays and I just cut those oversize so they would just fit in side the paint trays and come up on the edges a little bit next I used spray adhesive and sprayed it on the inside of the paint tray and then on the inside of the carpeting now I will tell you that this adhesive smells really bad so do it in an open area and I let these paint trays set there for at least eight hours before I put them inside of the chicken coop so after you do one or two of these it seems to go pretty quick and then next thing you know you have all four of your paint trays finished now that we've got all the nesting boxes done it's time to install them and the worst part about this process is taking out the old nesting boxes ugh so I'm putting in the new one and it's always nice to have a second set of hands if you can get one but I don't have one so I'm just using my legs to try to balance them and then till I get one screw in now I want to make sure it's level from side to side but another thing I want to make sure is front to back I'm going to put a little bit more tilt on this to make sure the eggs roll underneath our lid and I noticed here that it doesn't have enough tilt so all I'm doing is loosening up the screws I've cut a couple shims that I'm gonna put in the back and once I put them in there I get the tilt that I want to make sure that you know the eggs are rolling underneath the lid then I go back and I tighten up the screws to secure it tightly into place I'm going to go ahead and test this using some golf balls and we'll see what happens so when we put them in you'll notice that they just roll right underneath the lid and I know an egg isn't round like a golf ball but those were old pretty quick and it worked out really great now I'm just going to check the sturdiness of it make sure it's gonna good and in place and I think we're gonna call this project a wrap don't forget the golf balls in there so I've been using these rollaway nesting boxes for about a week and they seem to be working better I've been getting like two more eggs a day when I have been there's no evidence on the grounds of any aches shells or anything so I think it's kind of stopped the a eating a little bit now that took them a few days to start getting used to laying back in here so expect that I found a couple eggs on the ground but I was checking all the time throughout the day on the weekend to make sure that I could come in there and get them before they would eat them now if you've had chickens in the past you know this is a trick if you've never had chickens one thing that you do is you use like a fake Easter egg or you can buy Oh mature you know like tractor supply or something and you put them in the nesting boxes and it just basically shows them where to lay their eggs but other than that it's working great and I'd recommend it from you the only thing is if I had an upgrade I'd probably enclose this put little like sheets of that fake grass or they can go in there but that would be the only thing I'd do differently all right hope they work for you see you later you

Channel: DIY Todd - Todd Shelton

Views: 291,021

Rating: 4.8190885 out of 5

Keywords: diytodd, diy, maker, creator, project, homeimprovement, howto, todd shelton, todd, nesting boxes, roll away nesting box, roll away, chickens

Id: taobfYc2Da8

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2019