An impromptu nest box

I was out in the goat shed fixing a couple things when I noticed that one of my turkey hens was looking like she'd like to lay an egg. She kept trying to cram herself in one of the chicken nest boxes and that wasn't going so well. The weather has been such that none of the birds are the least interested in going outside, including this bird. Usually they lay under the old goat manger, but things have changed a bit and that is not really much of an option at the moment.


So, I went about trying to make the turkey happy. First I dug around for a big enough board that I could just lean it against a wall for her, but do I have such a board handy? No. So I sat there, thinking. Whilst thinking, I was staring at the old feeder. I'd built this nice, big box that holds somewhere around 100 pounds of feed but it doesn't work very well. They just knock all the feed out onto the floor and go from there. It usually just works better to pour their feed into dishes daily. Anyway, that thing has a hinged lid. Hmmmm......

I took off part of the front and removed the slanted board that was inside to make the feed roll down. Then I put in a small board for a bit of something to help hold the straw in. And that was it. I hardly got out of the way when the turkey hopped inside and made herself at home. I'm not sure how it will work with more than one bird, and these girls do like to nest communally, but it does the trick for now.

Here she is, all cozy in her box.