is there a max size for a nest box?

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SilverFeather

SilverFeather

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Hello all,

I have seen a lot of posts about the minimum size a nest box should be, but I can't find much information about the largest they should be.

I am constructing a new hutch for my American Chinchillas, and I am planning to have perminantly attached nest boxes out the back of the cages. Since they are outside of the cage, I don't have much of a space limitation. They will be attached to the back wall of the cages, and set a little lower than the floor of the main cage with a total 6inch lip to keep the kits from being drug out. They would have doors on the inside of the cage to keep mom out when necessary (and a shelf to sit on otherwise) with external access for me to check on the kits and clean out old bedding. I was thinking of making them 12 inches by 20 inches (the size of my doe's current nest boxes) but I could easily make them as long as the main cage section (30 inches wide).

Are there any downsides to having too large of a nest box? Do the kits have trouble staying together, or nursing if the space is too large?
 
I second what M4G says. To add on to that it is also much easier for dead kits to be pushed into the far corners where they can be hard to find. This can attract mice, ants, snakes, rats, and other unwanted predators.
 
When you're scaling the size of the nestbox you want to think just a hair larger than the doe. They only spend a few minutes in there anyways, so they don't need much space. As stated, keeping kits together is important. However, one caveat. The boxes I use are larger because my issue is always heat, not cold, and the kits need to be able to spread out if they start getting too warm. But, I have been known to switch out sizes of box with the same litter as they get larger. When they are first born, they need to stay together for warmth. If its so warm they need to spread out before 4 days of age, its simply too warm for them to be outside.
 
If you already have the nest box lower than the floor of the hutch, you may not want to have a lip to keep them from falling back in should they be drug out of the nest somehow. We have lowered nesting areas, but they are a wire bottomed nest so they're a very shallow bowl shape and the babies stay in a group. Flat bottomed nests can let the babies squirm off by themselves. The wire bottom of the nesting hutch also keeps it dryer when the babies are bigger but still in the nest.
 
Well, here the old timers farm style of hutch is a single, awfully small room with no nestbox, deep hay bedding, and the doe just makes a nest in a corner. I think the same would be with a too big nestbox. Kits getting out isn't really a problem since the nest is the lowest point in that bedding. How well that works might depend on what instincts are halfway bred out of some lines.
 

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