3-Box Nesting Box Bank with Roll-Out Option Plans

The carcass comes off 2 sheets of 3/4in exterior plywood, and page 3 shows exactly where every piece lands on them. Cut the 39" pieces first — the floor, the back, the front rail and the lid all share that length, so if your saw is drifting out of square you find out on the first cut and not on the fourth. The 4 side panels are one shape cut 4 times. Two finish as the outer ends and 2 as dividers; they are identical, so cut one, check it, and use it as the template for the rest. Each is 16" deep, 14" tall at the FRONT and 30" at the BACK with a straight line between those corners. That line is the 45 degree lid slope. You do not set a bevel to cut it — mark the two heights, join them, cut the line.

Stand the 4 side panels ON the floor panel, not beside it, front and back edges flush with the floor's. Outer ends first, then work inward. Mark the divider positions off ONE end from a running total, never box by box: 0" , 12-3/4" , 25-1/2" , 38-1/4" to the near face of each panel. Measuring each box off the last one stacks your saw kerf 2 times and the end box finishes the odd one out. Glue and screw up through the floor into the bottom edge of each panel, three per panel.

The back goes on the OUTSIDE of the side panels and covers the back edge of the floor, so it runs the full 30-3/4". It is what squares the bank: until it is on, the dividers are a comb and they rack. Get one corner square, screw it, then run the whole top edge before you touch the bottom. Screws at 8" centres into every side panel.

The front rail is the lip that holds bedding and eggs in. It lands on the FRONT FACES of the side panels and on the front edge of the floor, 4" tall, running the full 39". Penn State puts that lip at three to four inches; this is the top of the range. That leaves an opening 10" high and 12" wide into each box. A hen walks through that, so it is dimensioned here rather than being whatever is left over. Then the landing rail, which is the part most home-built banks leave off. A 2x2 running the full 39", carried on 4 triangular brackets screwed through the front rail into the side-panel edges, standing 4" clear in front of the lip with its top level with the lip at 4-3/4". UGA specifies that 4in offset: a hen needs somewhere to land and settle before she goes in, and without it she scrabbles at the lip and knocks eggs about.

One piece, 39" x 23-3/8", hinged along its BACK edge at the top of the back panel. Use loose-pin hinges and the whole lid lifts off when you want to scrub the bank out. It sits at 45 degrees. That slope exists to stop the hens roosting on top of the bank — a flat-topped bank becomes the highest perch in the coop inside a week and then everything below it is fouled. Oregon State is the source of the 45 degrees; they assert it without evidence, so treat it as our choice rather than as a law. The 0.75in overhang at the front is your finger grip. Lift it to horizontal and every box is open, with no headroom needed above the bank at all. To stand it fully upright against the wall you need 23-3/8" of clear space above it. Fit a stay or a prop stick — a lid you have to hold is a lid you will not open — and a hook or barrel bolt to keep it SHUT, because a lid that blows open in wind tears its own hinges out.

Skip this step and you have a conventional bedded nest box. Build it and the egg leaves the box the moment it is laid, which is how you stop egg eating and stop eggs being cracked or fouled under a sitting hen. Per box: one 2x4 laid FLAT against the back panel, 11-7/8" long. The roll panel rests on it at the back and lands on the floor at the front, leaving the front 3-1/2" of the box as the collection trough. That is 12.0 percent of slope, and it needs no ripping and no angle cuts — the rise is one 2x4 thickness and the run is what is left of the box depth. Twelve percent is not a round number we liked: it is the slope hens chose over a steeper one in a controlled test, and the bottom of the 12-18 percent band commercial nests run. Shallower and the egg sits; steeper and hens start refusing the box. Cover the roll panel with a nest pad, rubber mat or artificial turf — never wire. Bare plywood is too slippery and too hard on the egg, and wire in the lay zone is banned outright under EU 1999/74/EC. The pad cushions the egg, keeps it clean and still lets it roll; a worn one holds eggs back and the hen sits on them. The trough hood is one piece across all 3 boxes, hinged so it lifts. It stands 2-1/2" above the floor, which passes an egg (under 1-3/4" across) and keeps a hen's foot out.

A French cleat. Rip one 2x4 corner to corner down its length at 45 degrees and you have both halves: one screws to the wall, one to the back of the bank, bevels facing each other, and the bank drops on and locks itself down. It also lifts straight off for cleaning, which a bank screwed flat to a wall never does. The bank half goes on 3/4" in from each end, 37-1/2" long. Add a plain 2x4 laid flat across the bottom of the back as a spacer — the same 1-1/2" thickness as the mated cleat pair, or the bank hangs tilted, and on the roll-out version the eggs then run to one end. The wall cleat must hit studs. Not siding, not sheathing — studs. Find at least 2 of them and drive 4 structural screws of 3in. Bank plus hens plus bedding is about 111 lb; the schedule here is sized for 125 lb. Set the nest FLOOR 24" above the coop floor — Penn State, Maryland and UGA all give two feet, and it keeps the hop under the 25-5/8" Hy-Line calls ideal. Put the bank at least 48" ALONG THE WALL from the roosts.

Bedded boxes: about 2" of pine shavings or chopped straw. Not cedar, and not hay, which moulds. Extension genuinely disagrees on depth — Maryland says 1-2in, Penn State 2in, Mississippi State 3in, NC State 6in — so 2" is the middle of a real spread rather than a precise figure. Roll-out boxes: a pad, and nothing else. Hens pick a nest and keep using it, so the first week sets the next year. Keep them shut in until mid-morning if you can; a hen that lays her first clutch on the floor keeps doing it. Clean on the same schedule as the coop, and take the lid off its loose pins two or three times a year to get at the corners properly. Check where the dividers meet the back for red mite — that joint is the classic harbour, and painting the inside a light colour is what lets you see them.