I have come to the conclusion, after watching egg numbers rocket up, that chickens love a comfy place to lay their eggs. What they did with them since the last of the straw disappeared from the nesting boxes, a week or so ago, I'll never know... But since I re-stocked the nests the other day, they have been laying nicely! I had purposely let the straw run out (and by run out I mean not refill it from them taking it all out or eating it or whatever...?) since I built the nesting box to be a rollaway nest and I figured the weaning period for a normal flat nest was over and since they were laying nicely in there, I was going to set it at a tilt. (I had read somewhere that chickens may not normally be thrilled about going in a nest with no straw, but if you fill a rollaway box with straw for awhile to get them used to it and then remove it and tilt the nest, they take to the change better.) The nests would subsequently not have straw in them since an egg won't roll in a nest filled with straw. But after seeing the difference in eggs, I think I'm going to leave the nest flat and filled with straw. Whatever they like, I will do... :-)
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