Train Chickens To Lay Where YOU Want In 2 EASY Ways

Are your chickens laying their eggs in hidden places in the yard?

It’s so much easier to collect your eggs nice and clean inside your nest boxes than having a perpetual year-long Easter egg hunt in your yard. And there are ways that you can train your chickens to make sure that they’re laying in their nest and not out while they’re free-ranging.

🎭 Use Fake Eggs as Clever Training Tools

One way that you can train your chickens to lay in their nest boxes is you can get fake eggs.

Here I have some wooden and ceramic eggs. They sell these at the local feed store. I got these actually at a local craft store, and you can put fake eggs in your nests.

The chickens will see the fake eggs in the nest and they’ll be like, “Oh, that’s where I should lay it. I think I want to lay my egg there too.”

I’ve heard people use doorknobs, golf balls, all sorts of things, and that’ll help your chickens. But be aware that it could induce them to want to go broody though.

Seeing the eggs can make them want to sit, so do be careful. You may well have to remove them if you do have broody hens.

👵🧺 Old Hens, New Habits – Lockdown Method That Works

If you do have older hens already laying, then you may not need to use the fake eggs. The fake eggs could still be a good idea though if you don’t have that many hens laying or if you want to collect your eggs often to prevent chickens from cannibalizing their own eggs or possibly breaking them in the nest.

You could always have the fake eggs there to encourage the others. New baby pullets that are just coming into age will be more encouraged by the fake eggs, whereas the older hens should already have the idea.

But if they don’t already have the idea and then they think, “I like laying in the yard better. I found a really nice spot under a shed or I really like this bush over there,” how you can get your hens to for sure lay back in your coop again is lockdown two weeks.

🔐 Two-Week Lockdown to Reinforce Nesting Habits

Locking them in a pen with a nest box — being locked in there will train your chickens to lay in that spot.

After two weeks of laying in there, they will be like, “This is where I’m going to lay my egg.” They are creatures of habit. Once they find their favorite spot, they’ll continue to do so.

The two-week lockdown for laying their eggs will also work if you have a brand new chicken coop and have to get your hens used to sleeping in a new area.

It’s the same principle: if they are locked in that area, they’ll associate it as home. They’ll go back to sleep there and same with the nest — they’ll go back to lay there.

Unless your coop is too small and you just have a standard little hen house and not a walk-in coop, I don’t recommend locking up your hens in that area.

But if you do have an enclosed run, then I recommend locking up your birds in the enclosed run with the hen house in there and just not letting them free range for a couple of weeks to snap them back in the habit of laying in their nest and not out while they free range.

🧭 Keep an Eye on Their Egg Laying Patterns

Make sure that you know that your hens are actually laying eggs.

They do take a winter break, usually when they molt. They lose their feathers to grow new ones. But we know this lady started laying, and we haven’t seen another egg from her in a while after a molt.

So I have a suspicion that she is starting to find one of her old favorite spots in the yard. So it’s time for lockdown again.

It’s been a couple years since she had to do this but a couple weeks in here and I’m going to put a couple buddies in here for it too, because I don’t want her to be alone during this.

🐣 Reintroducing the Habit With Friends

I have a few other girls like my Easter Egger Boom Hilda that I’ll have to catch and put in here, and Fantasma, our other little silky too.

But — it works every time. Here’s Boom Hilda. She lays a beautiful blue egg, which I almost never get to see because she is our most notorious for trying to lay in the yard.

And I’m out of breath because you should have seen us run to catch her! She’s one of my favorites but she’s actually one of our least friendly.

A lot of our chickens are like lap dogs — she’s not one of them. So we got her. We’re going to put her in there.

I can’t wait to see her beautiful blue eggs again. Last time she did lockdown she was laying a long time for us.

And for as floofy and beautiful she looks, I think she’s plopping out some beautiful blue eggs somewhere. So here you go — Boom Hilda and Bellatrix.