Building chicken nesting boxes

As the time to when my little chickens would be all grown up approached, I started thinking more and more about the nest boxes I really needed to build for them. Luckily over the weekend before Thanksgiving I had enough time to build 4 boxes from plywood and scraps we had laying around the garage.

I did a bit of browsing around online for dimensions, and decided to build them approximately 11 inches deep & wide, and a bit taller - around 13 inches. Luckily I had just enough wood to build 2 nest box units, each having 2 nest boxes stacked on top of each other, with a deeper roof to provide a bit of an overhang. I cut the boards to the right dimensions on the table saw, then brought them in to the sunporch to assemble the boxes.

I used several clamps to hold the boxes square as I pre-drilled and then screwed the side boards on to the platform boards, and then carefully placed the nest area fronts on and pre-drilled and then screwed them onto the units too.

Right before we left for Thanksgiving weekend I ran out to the coop and installed one of the nest boxes, by pre-drilling through the side of the nest box and into a wall 2 by 4 and then putting a screw through. That way the plywood exterior wall of the coop would serve dual purpose as the back of the next box too! Just in case those sneaky little hens were waiting for a nice nest box to lay me some cute little eggs, they might be tempted to start while I was gone. No such luck, and still no eggs yet, but I'm ever hopeful :)