Dirty girl

[Marigold]

My Columbian Blacktail pullet is laying daily and her eggs are steadily increasing in size. To start with, she used the nest box, but nowadays she always seems to lay before she gets up in the morning, so her lovely brown egg goes splat into the pile of poo under the perch that she's produced overnight. Consequently, her egg is always very dirty.
If she was laying in a nestbox where someone had persistently spent the night, I'd know how to
re-train her, but I'm a bit stuck on how to make her get up at the right time and lay in the nice clean nest boxes, like everyone else does.
Any ideas?

 

[rick]

That's annoying Marigold! I'm guessing that as time moves on her cycle will move away from the morning enough so that she goes back to moving about before wanting to lay and so back to the nest box. As they tend not to do it generally (unless roosting in the nest box) then it must be an unusual case of bad timing I would think and am stuck for suggestions of what to do about it in the meanwhile.

 

[Marigold]

Thanks Rick, it has occurred to me that her cycle might change, but now the mornings are getting darker for longer, I think maybe the problem will become more entrenched over winter. I'm already finding it harder to wake up early myself!

 

[dinosaw]

I have occasionally had this with new layers and it tends to clear itself up after a few weeks, I have always thought it was either something to do with them not being able to fully control themselves when young or a case of them being spooked by something around the run during the night. I suppose if it doesn't get better you could put a battery operated light in the coop that operates on a timer to come on early so that they find it too light to lay on the perch and take themselves off to the next box.