Egg Thief

Something is still taking our eggs. Today, there were only two eggs in the coop and one of them was broken open. Yesterday, the same.

I think I need to rethink the design of the nesting box. At the moment, I have the nesting box attached to the side of the coop with the chickens laying into a tray filled with wood shavings. My aunty and uncle had a chicken coop, when I was young, that allowed the eggs to roll out into a catcher. If I can get the eggs rolling out into a catcher, I can probably eliminate some of the threat to the eggs. If it is the chickens that are eating the eggs, then this should stop them from doing that.

What I will need to do is to take the nesting box off the coop, redesign and rebuild it. I need to make the nesting box so that the floor of the nesting box is slightly sloped so that the eggs roll down into a catcher when they are laid. The nesting box redesign needs to provide a more commodious space for the chickens too. I think that the reason that the chickens lay on the floor of the coop is that the nesting box isn’t spacious enough for them.

I can reuse some of the material from the existing box, so I won’t need to buy much for the rebuild.