Hen Chronicles: Breaking the code of the nest box

You might think the relationship between a hen and her nest box is straightforward, but I’ve found that it can be baffling.

Our nest boxes are small, semi-enclosed sections of the coop where, ideally, the hens go to lay their eggs. In fact, they are quite methodical about using the boxes for that purpose, rarely depositing eggs anywhere else in the coop or the pen.

But there are subtleties here, nuances that I don’t claim to understand.

First of all, we have two nest boxes that are adjacent to one another. For some reason, our four hens almost always use the same box, leaving the other one vacant. Is it the decor? (Nonexistent in both cases.) The ambience? (Ditto.) The unused box is a bit larger than the preferred spot. Maybe it isn’t private enough to suit their tastes?

Beyond who lays where, there’s the matter of nest-box protocol. Usually, the hens occupy the box individually, one at a time, which only makes sense because their favorite box is just big enough to accommodate one adult hen comfortably. But sometimes I’ll lift the lid and find two of them crammed into one box. Go figure.

And then there’s the variety of next-box activities. Most of the time, Snow, Nala, Hope and Nellie just do what they're supposed to do there: lay their eggs. But a couple of times when I locked up the coop for the night, I found a chicken in the nest box instead of up on the roost with the other hens. Why? Did she spend the whole night there? I don’t know the answer to either question, but there wasn’t an egg in the box the following morning.

The hens’ relationship with the nest box also seems to change from time to time, depending on where they are in the egg-laying cycle. Sometimes they just hang out there, maybe because it’s a cozy nook. At other times, I find them sitting in the box because they are about to lay an egg, or have just done so.

Their mood while in the box varies accordingly.

I usually leave a hen alone when I spot her in the box, to avoid interfering with Job One. But sometimes I’m in a hurry to get all of the hens out into the pen so I can clean the coop, or I want to check for eggs. That’s when I occasionally give the occupant a gentle nudge, to try to coax her to vacate the premises.

Often, the hen in question will react by getting up and walking away, either with or without leaving an egg behind. One time, though, a normally docile Rhode Island Red swung her head around with amazing speed to peck my hand. Hard. Maybe I disturbed her in mid lay or she was brooding over a fresh egg, even though all of our eggs are unfertilized because we have no rooster. Either way, I got the message and left her alone.

Then there was the reaction I got one day last week when I lifted the lid on the nest box and found a Rhode Island Red nestled inside. She peered up at me with a calm look in her eye, but stayed put. As I began gently lowering the lid, the hen (it was Hope or Nellie - the Reds are hard to tell apart) got up on her own and slowly sauntered off, as if that had been her intention all along.

Here's another oddity. Show up with treats while any hen is in the nest box and she’ll run out into the pen to join the rest of the flock for a snack, no matter what she was doing inside. Such behavior leaves me with the impression that chickens may have some control over when they lay, and can hold off for a bit when a higher priority - food - materializes unexpectedly.

So the nest box may be a simple-looking contraption, but it has multiple uses: delivery room, maternity ward, meditation center and bedroom, all rolled into one. It's sort of like a man cave, but for far-more-useful girls who actually get some work done in there on a regular basis.