Beachy Nesting Boxes

As I said in the previous post, we moved our little bantam chickens into the old, re-worked coop. Why, you ask? I thought you would never ask!

First-to get them away from the standard chickens that were picking on them relentlessly and Second-to give them a place where they could breed in peace. But, because we moved the original nesting boxes into the new coop, we had to come up with a new set of boxes for the bantams.

Since Lowe's already gets a disproportionate share of our income, my handyman decided to take a look around the garage to see what we already had that could be made into nesting boxes. Over in the corner, behind the door, he had stashed the bi fold doors that were originally on all of the closets inside the house. We had already used some of them on the 2008 coop for the doors that you see opened to the inside of the coop in the previous post, and for the little pop door that lets the chickens in and out of the coop. We had also used one to make a door from the pen out into the yard, but that one was removed during the remodel of the pen.

So, my handyman took one bi fold door, one piece of plywood that was already the right size, a few scraps of furring strips, a bunch of screws, a good helper (me) and went to work:

The plywood just happened to be the size we needed to make 2 nesting boxes, so no energy was needed to cut it to size.

The nesting boxes needed to have a sloping roof so that the chickens won't (supposedly) roost on top and do what chickens do when they are roosting (poop!) and make a mess of the nests. My handyman took a good look at the bi fold doors and decided that the lower, solid portion of the door would make perfect end panels.

He cut the panels 14" in the back and 12" in the front. Then he made a center divider by cutting a portion of the louver section to the same size, cutting in between the louvers to make life easier (and to keep the louver from falling out). Then he centered the panels on the plywood and screwed them together from the bottom, into the thickest part of the door sections.Then he laid the remaining portion of the door across the top to see if it fit and it did! All he had to do was cut off 2 louvers to make it the right size. Then he added 2 pieces of furring strip to the front of the box. These are to keep the straw bedding and the eggs from falling out of the nesting box.I found the left over spray paint from my co-workers office re-do, took the nesting boxes outside and covered them with beautiful, beachy blue paint.We screwed them into place in the coop and filled them with straw bedding. Now we just have to wait for the bantams to get a little bit older and discover that egg laying is what those big blue boxes are for!

Just between you and me, I've already seen one of them checking them out! I'll keep you updated.