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If you keep chickens, it’s common to find eggs everywhere except in the nesting boxes, especially if your chickens can roam freely. You might find eggs on the coop floor, in tall grass, in backyard corners, sheds, or even in the dog house—if you’re lucky enough to find them at all. It can sometimes feel like the chickens are intentionally ignoring the nesting boxes you’ve prepared.
Laying eggs in nesting boxes is a learned behavior for chickens, not instinctual. Their natural instinct is to hide their eggs in places they consider safe from predators. Without a broody hen to guide them, young chickens will scatter their eggs randomly, so it’s up to you to train them otherwise.
One effective method to teach chickens to use nesting boxes is by using fake eggs. Placing a fake egg in a nesting box signals to chickens that it’s a safe spot to lay eggs. Fake eggs can also stimulate broody behavior in hens and create a natural incubator. Additionally, if multiple hens are using the same nesting box, fake eggs can act as decoys to encourage them to use other boxes.
While fake eggs won’t force chickens to start laying eggs, they can help consolidate egg-laying to one location. That said, here’s why fake eggs are beneficial and how to use them effectively.
Understanding the Role of Fake Eggs in Chicken Coops
The main reason why people use fake eggs is to encourage chickens to lay their eggs in nesting boxes instead of all over the place. This way, you can have clean and fresh eggs every morning without having to search the coop or yard to find them.
Placing the dummy egg in the nest box signals to the chicken that this is the place to lay the eggs. When they see that there is an untouched egg already in the nesting box, the chickens will figure out that that spot is safe from predators.
Using fake eggs to get chickens to use nesting boxes also has health benefits. When a chicken lays an egg on the ground or the coop floor, it can easily get tainted and unfit for human use. Besides the dirt you’ll have to clean, feces lying on the ground can coil the eggs, causing bacterial contamination.
In addition, eggs lying around can break easily. This can cause hens to start eating eggs, leading to them eventually breaking and eating eggs from the nesting boxes. This creates a habit that is very difficult to get rid of.
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Dummy eggs can also help you encourage your hen to go broody, providing a perfect natural incubator and broody box. Large farms and corporate breeders’ primary interest is getting as many chicken products for sale as possible.
As a result, most modern chicken breeds have lost their broodiness gene. However, some small backyard chicken owners still want to propagate their flock naturally. Leaving some broody hen fake eggs in the nesting box may encourage the chicken to start sitting on them. When your hen commits to sitting on the eggs, you can replace fakes with real ones.
If you have more than a handful of chickens in your backyard, you may face the problem of “communal nesting.” This means that multiple hens are laying eggs in the same nesting box, which they recognize as a “good one.”
When this happens, chickens can become overstressed due to the lack of comfort in the shared nest, and eggs can fall out of the box and break.
The best way to deal with this situation is to use fake eggs as a decoy and place them in the unused nesting boxes. This will assure the hens that other boxes are also good enough to lay there.
Do Fake Eggs Help Chickens Lay?
Fake eggs can help you in a lot of ways, but they can’t help you force chickens to lay eggs. The hens will “lay when they lay,” and you cannot do much about it. At what age a pullet starts laying eggs depends on several factors, with the breed of the particular chicken being the most influential.
They can also start laying eggs sooner or later depending on nutrition, exposure to daylight, and stress and comfort levels.
Dummy eggs will also do nothing to increase egg production. A hen will lay a certain number of eggs regardless of putting fake eggs in nesting boxes. However, using them will still get you more eggs daily.
When all the eggs are in the nesting boxes, it’s much easier to collect them, and you won’t leave any hidden in the grass or elsewhere in the backyard. Furthermore, you’ll have fewer broken eggs.
Can Chickens Identify Fertilized Eggs?
Chickens don’t need roosters to lay eggs. Still, you’ll need a rooster to perform his mating duties for fertilized eggs. Even after only one mating session, the hen can lay fertilized eggs for up to three weeks.
However, she will not know if her eggs are fertilized or not. Some roosters can be infertile, so the eggs may not be fertilized even after mating. In addition, the hen can’t even tell if the eggs are hers or laid by a different chicken.
Nevertheless, if the hen goes broody, her instinct is to form a clutch of eggs, usually around a dozen. She then sits on the eggs, trying to hatch them, fertilized or not. When broody, she may even sit on a nest filled with fake or empty eggs.
Should I Be Putting Fake Eggs In Nesting Boxes?
If your hens are laying eggs all over the backyard or on the coop floor, you’ll likely have trouble collecting them. There’s a good chance you won’t even find some of them.
The best thing you can do in this situation is to put fake eggs in the nesting boxes. This will stimulate hens to lay their eggs in the boxes, making daily collecting much easier.
Besides, you’ll have fewer broken eggs, prevent bacterial contamination from the feces found on the ground, and encourage hens to go broody if needed.
When Should I Put Fake Eggs In Nesting Boxes?
By the time your chicken starts laying eggs, you should already have prepared the fake ones to place in the nesting boxes. The point of lay to the age at which the pullet lays its first eggs can vary depending on many factors. On average, this should happen when they’re 16-24 weeks old.
A hen may not notice dummy eggs right away, so be patient, as there may be some time before she starts laying eggs in the nesting box.
It helps to get at least one pullet to start laying eggs where she’s in the nesting box. Others will likely follow the leader and soon start doing the same.
Plastic vs. Porcelain Fake Eggs: Which Is Better?
When choosing what type of fake eggs to use, you have several options. For years, most backyard chicken owners used porcelain fake eggs for chicken. These dummy eggs are a frequent choice, but many people use plastic or even wooden ones.
Porcelain eggs probably resemble the real thing the most and are very hard, discouraging chickens from trying to break and eat them. They may try to peck a few times but soon give up in frustration. Nevertheless, porcelain fake eggs are probably the most expensive option available.
That’s the reason why more and more people opt for plastic dummy eggs. They’re much cheaper and also very durable. However, they’re rather light and often have bright colors, provoking chickens to peck at them.
Lately, golf balls have also become a popular option. They’re very cheap; you may even get old ones for free if you have a golf course nearby. Although they work in most cases, some chickens may see the difference between golf balls and real eggs and kick them out of the nest.
How To Make DIY Fake Eggs
If you prefer a DIY approach, you can make fake eggs yourself. Those handy with wood can carve out a dummy egg and color it to resemble real ones more. Another option is to shape them out of clay, which you will later fire to make them solid.
You can even use a real egg to make a new, fake one. Using a needle, poke a hole at the top and bottom of the egg and gently blow it to empty the shell.
Then, fill it out with plaster of Paris and seal it with hot glue. When it dries, sand it down until it’s smooth and there are no bumps, and you’ll have a realistic-looking fake egg.
