The Best Nest Box for Chickens - 1000 Hens on Pasture

[Applause] [Music] [Music] hello we are Michael and Courtney kitchen rater we own three brothers farm in Oconomowoc Wisconsin which is in southeast part of the state right now we have 900 laying hens and they're about ready to get out on pasture once the once we get a little green on the ground and they're over here in a Prairie schooner and in about an hour we're going to have another 900 coming to the farm from a from an organic hatchery about an hour away from us and so we're pretty excited about that but before they get here we're going to give you a quick tour of the new Prairie schooner with the best nest box rollaway boxes and feeders and nipple jumpers ok so come in with me to the schooner and we'll check out the nest boxes so this is uh this is a Prairie schooner from Prairie schooners LLC where our friend David Schafer sends a Scindia kit which is really nice it's 20 by 40 so 800 square feet and in this we put the best nest box rollaway in this boxes and there are a few things that we learn from the first go-around of putting nest boxes in the schooner and so we'll just show you what we're what we're working with and why we changed some things first of all we lowered the nest box we used to have them easily able to collect over this time we're going to keep them low so we can we can still collect pretty easily like this the reason that we're gonna have these nest boxes so low is so that the chickens can figure out more easily to go into them otherwise they have about a three three to three and a half foot jump to get up into the nest box this way they only have about 18 inches the other thing that we did we space these nest boxes about apart before we've had nest boxes right up next to each other and we tend to make a few turns with our schooner so we space them so they have a little bit of room to flex so we with the way we mounted these is also kind of important we screwed the tabs into a 2x4 up here and and then also we put a board down here to brace the bottom I've seen a lot of other places and we used to do this we used to not put a board down here and thought that was okay but the eggs would start to crack because the angle the angle with a lot of the eggs were all too fast grace come off like that make some nice and level the eggs don't don't crack that way don't you come closer and I'll show you how to work the nest box so the chickens will jump up on here and go in the nest box they lay an egg on this brown astroturf material which is nice and soft kind of mimics straw they're grass so it's relatively comfortable for the bird and then once all the chickens laid their eggs we'll come out here about 4:00 and afternoon and we come with our plastic trays and hinge this up and flip this down and we'll have you know 50 50 eggs in here or so and be able to collectin which is is really quite convenient so the point is that the chickens don't have access to the eggs right after they lay it a lot of chickens will get in a terrible habit of eating their eggs and other chickens eggs and it's just it's a really miserable thing to deal with goes not only do they eat the egg but then yoke gets all over the other eggs and encourages cracking and more pecking so this eliminates that completely and and as long as they're not laying on the ground they'll be laying in here and if if you get ground eggs they're dirty and tend to crack if they land here they're clean and not cracked one thing cool about this is that they have they have larger squares for this this rollaway portion and that will actually slow down the egg as its as its approaching the the end here and the the the metal actually kind of curls up gently so there's really no chance of the eggs breaking they'll just kind of they'll have the opportunity to roll so there's a little bit of give there the well the nice thing about Westminster box they have three flaps so one two three and we took out the middle one this will allow the chickens to more easily recognize that they can get in and out pretty easily and then once they put their head over behind the curtains it'll be dark and they will be comfortable that chickens want a nice dark area to lay an egg after they're trained to go in and out will start putting these on maybe one at a time or two or three at a time and so they'll start to get used to going in through the through the flaps so this is another feature of the best nest box it has a back it's really nice because it keeps the it keeps the nest box really dark for the girls and that way we can use it in this type of system this is essentially a screen house on pipes kids so obviously there are a lot of elements that can they can affect the nest box including light going into the nest box and rain or whatever if we forget to roll down the side so that's really nice that's it's gonna be a huge improvement for us so for when we get our new girls in we're gonna put in a lot of upfront work for get it to train them to use the nest boxes the idea is that I'll be out here early in the morning for a couple hours just kind of walking around the girls and whichever girls squats and puts it swings out that means that that girl is her reproductive system is functioning and it's going to be ready to lay an egg any day so the girls that squat I'll just grab from the ground and put them in here and that just indicates to the chicken hey there's a dark safe spot for me to lay an egg if they don't have me putting them in there they might find a nice dark spot under the nest box or under the feeders chickens like to lay under the feeders so as long as I'm initiating that then they should start using the nest boxes pretty regularly any chickens that I do see laying egg on the ground will take the egg put it in the nest box and then grab the chicken and put it in the nest box also so if the chicken is about to lay an egg on the ground I can see it put it in there and I'll actually flip this up and lock the chicken in there until it lays the egg and so the next day it's going to thank hey where did I lay that egg yesterday nice spot I'm going in there at night I will just flip this I'll keep this roost bar up and that's gonna prevent the chickens from being able to go into the nest box at night and pooping on that astroturf if there's poop on the astroturf if the eggs still get kind of dirty even if they roll away so they'll be trained to just roost on the on the crossbars or not roost at all they don't really need to roost and and stay out of the nest box and they're not laying an egg so we're gonna put in the upfront time to be around the girls walk around them make sure that they understand the nest box is a safe dark place for them to be if they do start laying out of the boxes for some reason it's probably gonna be under the feeders or under the nest boxes and at that point we'll just put uncomfortable things at those spots in past we've put milk crates upside down where they lay eggs and that has that has significantly reduced that issue just a pointer is that when you when you mount the nest box you want to mount it at a height so that the girls can still get out from underneath because this is essentially a 40-foot door for the chickens to get out if you're de arranging which we do we're gonna have four electric fences around our coop and this will move every Tuesday and Friday but for the for the time when they're in one spot they need to be coming out and de arranging so the fact that they have a 40-foot door over here forty foot door on the other side and 20 foot doors on each on each end they're gonna have free access to wherever they want to go and be able to find the shade very easily depending the time of day and the sun's position the front we used to put conveyor belt on the front and we decided not to do that this time so they do have more access we do have a guard dog with our birds so we're not worried about predators getting in under there if you don't have a guard dog or fences then I shore that up but it certainly creates a better quality of life for the farmer and the chicken to just have a guard dog and and let them day range at night we will probably just close this back up depending on the season especially for the girls until maybe for another three weeks or so and then they'll be able to come out right away in the morning when they wake up we are at three brothers farm and we're in like will used to be the Langham's winter quarters and this is a thirty by ninety six foot greenhouse so it's about 2800 square feet and we keep about nine hundred birds in here throughout the winter months pretty much from mid-november into about mid-april and then we let them out so we have all this scraped out right now all the bedding is scraped out but during the winter we usually put about a foot to 18 inches worth of leaves and wood chips that we get from local arborists and anybody willing to give us carbon so we load it up in here before we get the girls in and then along the sides we put straw bales small small square straw bales and we lay them flat and we put the best nest box rollaway next box is on there and we do that for a couple of reasons first is that it helps insulate the eggs so it can get down to maybe five degrees and the eggs still are not cracking when when it gets really cold and it also elevates the nest boxes off the ground so that it's a little bit more ergonomic for us to collect the eggs and then as a transition to go from winter to summer in about mid-april we open up this door on the end but we do like to go out into the fresh grass and fresh there and then we also have our schooner up there so the chickens start to explore that will let them out there for a couple days and then ultimately close up that door and and then the chickens will start eating and laying eggs in that schooner so about second or third day of the chickens having access out there we'll take the nest boxes them in here put them into the schooner and then force the birds out there for the for a night [Music]

Channel: Best Nest Box

Views: 934,799

Keywords: chicken, eggs, best nest box, coop, pasture, pastured farm, rollaway, roll away, reversible, rollout, roll out, broken eggs, unbroken eggs, egg pecking, dirty eggs, washing eggs, nest box, chicken coop setup, bestnestbox, hunger, clean, egg, hens, chicken coop, chickens, raising hens, farming, natural, three brothers farm, prairie schooner, david schafer, rotational grazing, pasture grazing, hens on pasture, the best nest box

Id: T6O-IWwJz0Y

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2019