How to make a nest for laying hens with an egg collector with your own hands at home

Proper arrangement of the poultry house has a positive effect on egg production and egg quality. The presence of nests or specially prepared places for laying hens is a prerequisite for breeding and keeping birds. You can build nests to house chickens yourself or purchase them from livestock stores.

Requirements for nests for laying hens

Any chicken perches should be constructed and installed with basic requirements in mind. In particular:

1. For flooring in the nest, you can use straw or sawdust. It is recommended that the lower part be made of metal mesh to ensure constant ventilation of the nests.
2. Homemade perches should be positioned in such a way that there is free space to the floor.
3. The number of nests is calculated based on the chicken population.
4. Perches should not be placed close to the walls, since with the onset of winter, such places are colder than other parts of the house.
5. The material used to create the perches is pre-polished, and only short nails are used to connect the parts. Protruding sharp parts are cut off and rubbed with a file to prevent injury to the chickens.

Dimensions and placement

Regardless of the type of nest chosen, it is recommended to adhere to standard dimensions. Depth roost for laying hens varies between 30-40 cm, taking into account the size of the bird, and 30 cm in width and height. The optimal height above the floor is 30-35 cm. The take-off bar should be located 10 cm from the entrance to the nest and have a cross-section of 5 x 2.

The placement of perches is carried out on the basis of pre-prepared drawings, where the free area and dimensions of the internal elements of the poultry house are determined. Drawings need to be made for any number of perches, including for 20 or more birds. Places for birds should be comfortable and not create problems when cleaning the chicken coop. It is important to provide open access to them for periodic collection of eggs and renewal of the flooring. If laying hens do not lay eggs in the place allocated for them, they are moved to a more favorable position.

Types of nests and their features

Different types of nests differ in design features, manufacturing method and certain advantages. To choose the best option, you should familiarize yourself with all offers. The following varieties exist:

1. Perches in boxes. The chicken houses look like a box with an entrance opening. A space is created inside for birds to retire and lay eggs. By installing such a structure, it is easy to train chickens to lay eggs in nests by closing them inside for a while.
2. Nests made from scrap materials. This option is suitable for novice poultry farmers who have not had time to properly equip the chicken coop. This is also the optimal solution for small numbers and temporary breeding of birds. The main requirement is that all available materials must be intact and clean.
3. Nests with egg collector. Eggs are collected from special trays, and laying hens interact with the eggs for a short amount of time. When making it yourself, a funnel-shaped hole is made in the central part of the perch.

How to make nests for chickens with your own hands

When constructing perches for chickens at home, you first need to decide on a suitable variety and prepare a drawing. The manufacturing process depends on your own requirements for the finished structure.

Nest made from scrap materials

If you need to equip a poultry house in a short time, you can make perches for chickens using scrap materials. In particular, cardboard boxes, crates, buckets and other containers are suitable. Often, farmers even use rubber tires and accessories with compartments.

The containers you choose should be moderately spacious so that the chickens can be comfortable inside.The surfaces of materials must be carefully inspected to ensure that they are free of defects, cracks and signs of rotting. The containers are placed in the chicken coop, filled with hay or sawdust and covered with curtains.

In most situations, such structures perform a temporary function and are used until more durable ones are purchased or created.

Regular nest

It is possible to build a conventional structure from wood, plywood or OSB boards without special skills and experience. The construction is not labor-intensive and will not take a lot of time. Perches can be single or multi-tiered. For construction, you need to prepare the base material, fasteners (screws, nails, self-tapping screws), sandpaper, a block, a hammer and a saw. To build a seat, you need to perform the following steps sequentially:

1. Determine the technical parameters, count the number of seats and draw up visual drawings.
2. Process the material with sandpaper or a file to smooth out sharp corners and rough areas.
3. Make blanks of the structure and, if there are defects, re-grind.
4. Connect the cut parts to each other and fix the block at the inner corners. The presence of timber gives the resulting container additional rigidity.
5. Provide passage to the perch by leaving the front open or boarding it up and making a small entrance hole. A threshold about 10 cm high is built at the bottom of the structure.
6. At a distance of 10 cm from the entrance to the nest, fix the rail in a horizontal position, which will serve as a take-off platform for the hens.

Having finished building the nest, you need to carefully inspect it. If there are sharp corners, protruding screws or other defects, the problems should be corrected to avoid traumatic situations.

Nest with egg collector

A perch equipped with a container for collecting eggs is a device that helps reduce the labor costs of the poultry farmer. The design can be made with a special container under the perch or with a double bottom. When choosing the second option, you will need to use a soft material for upholstering the second bottom, for example, linoleum, felt or fabric. The material is fixed with the wrong side up.

In addition to ease of use, the need to install a perch with an egg collector arises so that chickens with an aggressive nature do not peck eggs. Once on the tray, the eggs find themselves in a space limited from birds. To make trap nests, you need:

1. Draw a drawing and make blanks based on it. Then the structural elements must be processed with a file and sandpaper.
2. The lower part of the perch is fixed at a slope of about 5 degrees relative to the rear wall. A small space must be left between the wall surface and the bottom edge so that the egg can pass through the gap.
3. The tray for collecting eggs is made more oblong, 10-15 cm larger than the main structure. The egg collector is lined with woven material and a wooden strip is fixed to the front.
4. By analogy with the bottom of the perch, the egg collector is secured at a slight slope.

A nest with a container for collecting eggs is made in the same way, with one difference. Instead of a gap between the bottom and the back wall, a slot is made in the lower cavity of the container, the diameter of which is slightly larger than the size of a chicken egg.

Frame nest

The main advantages of the frame structure are strength and long service life.To build this type of nest you will need a standard set of materials and tools. The process of constructing a seat for a hen involves assembling a frame from wooden blocks and covering it with plywood. Installation of an egg collector is not a mandatory requirement and is carried out at the request of the poultry farmer.

Metal socket

Building a perch made of metal will take more time and be more difficult than building a wooden structure. At the same time, an iron perch is many times more resistant to external influences and has a long service life. To carry out the work you will need to use a metal grinder, a hammer drill and screws. The materials you will need are metal pipes with a cross section of 3-5 cm, sheets of galvanized steel and wire or steel mesh. To make the design you need:

1. Draw a diagram of the future structure, mark the markings on steel sheets and make blanks.
2. Cut the bottom of the seat from the mesh or twist a similar part from wire.
3. Connect the walls and bottom with screws, placing the lower part at an angle of 10 degrees, and then attach the roof.
4. Install a container for collecting eggs, which is cut out of steel sheets and lined with fabric.

We fix the nests in the chicken coop

The perches in the poultry house must be secured so that it is convenient for the hens to sit in them and lay eggs. It is preferable that the nests do not come into contact with the walls of the chicken coop. The most common option is the construction of special stands that are fixed to the walls. The stands are made from ordinary wooden boards of suitable length, and screws and hinges are used as fastening elements.

How to train a laying hen to the nest?

To accustom the bird to the nest, you can forcibly restrict its access to free movement and periodically leave it on the perch. As a less aggressive method, you can place objects that look like chicken eggs in the seats.