Since we started raising chickens, we are always learning and working to improve what we have. My husband built a coop from scratch and did a good job, but we found it challenging to gather the eggs from inside the coop. We wanted something easier, and my husband started brainstorming some ideas. The plan was to put nesting boxes on the outside of the coop with a door that we could just open to gather the eggs like the many commercial coops that we had seen.
It really came in handy that we have a cat because we came up with the idea to use cat litter pails for nesting boxes. The 35-pound pails were perfect for our needs. We had already been using them for storage and this was just one more handy use for them. They would already have a built in door so it seemed liked a perfect solution.
We have a nesting box for each chicken.
My husband just took one side of the coop and cut openings for the nesting boxes. You can find instructions with photographs for what we did here. I really like the way it turned out. Now it is super easy to collect eggs or a broody chicken from the nesting boxes. The size is perfect for our bantam chickens. I don’t know how well they work for regular size chickens.
It was so great to see the girls use the new boxes.
I tried blocking off the nesting box from our broody hen.
I am always about making my chicken chores easier and the new nesting boxes sure make life so much better. I appreciate my husband’s work on the project. It may not be fancy, but it does the job and that is the most important thing to me. Since we completed our project, I noticed some other people have used litter pails for nesting boxes too. I think there is something pretty cool about being able to repurpose an item. My husband calls it redneck ingenuity.
