I'd love to see some photos, Bernie. We have an old nest box in our hen house with about eight compartments that was originally a cubby for children's books and other belongings in a school. We use pine shavings and paper from our shredder in the bottom of the boxes. We can retrieve the eggs from outside via a fold-down door, but in wet or snowy weather the eggs still get very dirty.
Meyer Hatchery
I asked about the number of hens per nest box because I inherited from my dad a wall hanging galvanized metal nesting unit with 12 compartments and I needed to know how many compartments to eliminate to fit it in my small hen house. I will cut out one of the middle sections resulting in two units, a four compartment section and a six compartment section.
This is a very informative thread. Thank you all.
CountryGardens - That sounds like a great plan. At what age to you put them in the coop and do you provide heating for them?
Hope the current snow storm misses you all. It's really coming down hard right now. Schools were closed early.
We have heat lamps in with them now.
The hens that are laying have no extra heat. Gets cold, but they can take it. 5 hens, 5 eggs today. High temp for day was +1º. Low tonight will be near -10º.
We don't change coops, just put the nest boxes in when we start finding some eggs.
I would send a picture, but not when this cold.
CountryGardens, forgot to ask what breed of chickens you have? I saw some beautiful colored eggs at the store, large, dark brown and speckled, and wondered what breed they were from. There are a number of large Amish (egg) farms here so it's hard to tell.
Does anyone here have Welsummers? I thought they were supposed to lay a large, dark-ish speckled egg. My two Wellies lay a very tiny egg (Silkie sized) that sometimes has one speck on it. Shoot, I'm a sucker for speckles too.
Ours are Gold Star Layers.
They are bred by the Amish in Iowa.
I had a Barnevelder that laid a dark big beautiful egg with Speckles. :)
Did you get the Barnevelder from a hatchery? I'm all about a colorful egg basket haha. I have way too many chicks coming this spring - 14 sexed chicks from Meyers, and 10 straight run Marans from a breeder. I will probably change the Meyers order and not get the 2 Marans and 3 Wellies I ordered from them. I'm on a Speckles Kick right now and want lots of them!