A place to lay your...eggs

The chickens don't have a traditional 'coop' yet. They go around in this bottomless hoop structure and are let out after they lay their eggs.

I was reading about chickens the other day and started to realize how they needed a nest box to lay in. I felt bad for them. And I worried that they were learning bad habits that might be hard to break later.

Fast forward to 5am Sunday morning. For some reason, I woke up in bed, it was still totally dark outside. I lay there and thought about the 'poor' hens with no place to lay their eggs. I decided to take care of business right then.

I went out to the shop and found a box, then went to the garden and felt around in the dark to gather some straw for the box. I put it in the hoop house while the chickies were still roosting/sleeping.

I went back to the house and looked forward to the morning. What would the chickens do with the new box? Would they know what to do?

The picture above is how I found them when I went out later that morning. All the 'girls' were crowded around the box like ladies at the State Fair watching a kitchen demonstration. It was SO CUTE!



The ones that were less brave or maybe just low on the peck order looked on as the lucky lady sat in the box and picked at the straw, carefully arranging and rearranging to make it just right.

When she left, I saw the proof I had been looking for. Proof that they did want a box, that they knew precisely what to do with it.

The sweet things.