YENAM 3-Hole Roll-Away Nest Box Review

What you're buying

A galvanized steel nest box with three compartments, built to hang on a coop wall, with two features the listing names that matter more than the metal does. The roll-away floor is the important one: each compartment is tilted so a new egg rolls forward under a secure lid into a collection tray. There's also a swing perch across the front, a landing rail for a hen before she steps in.

Roll-away is the reason to look at this box at all. An egg that leaves the nest the moment it's laid can't be trodden on, sat on for six hours, or pecked open by a hen who has developed a taste for eggs, and egg eating is a habit that's far easier to prevent than to cure.

On capacity, extension guidance is roughly one nest per four to five hens, since hens queue for a favorite box no matter how many you supply. Three compartments therefore suit a flock of about twelve to fifteen birds, which covers most backyard setups comfortably.

Build quality: the material is the point

Galvanized steel does two things wood can't. It doesn't absorb moisture, droppings or the smell that comes with them, and it can be scraped and hosed and left to dry without swelling or splitting. A wooden box in a damp coop is a consumable; a metal one isn't.

What the listing leaves out is the steel gauge and how the edges are finished, and both matter. A thin gauge dents and can flex where it hangs, and a rolled edge is the difference between a box you reach into confidently and one with a lip worth taping. Check the edges on arrival and run a hand round them before the birds do.

One published number doesn't add up, and it's worth raising before you buy. The listing gives the unit as 12.2 inches long, 9.9 wide and 15.4 high. A standard nest is about a foot square, so three of them side by side can't fit inside twelve inches of length. Either the figure is carton data, or the compartments are considerably smaller than a standard hen wants. We couldn't resolve which from the listing, and a box whose compartments are too tight is one hens will refuse in favor of a corner of the coop floor, so it's the first thing we would measure on arrival.

Reliability and safety: mites, cold, and where you hang it

The mite argument for metal is real but narrower than it is usually sold. Red mite are nocturnal: they shelter by day in seams, crevices and nest box joints, then feed at night on birds that are on the roost, which is where hens actually sleep. A hen sitting in a box overnight is the exception rather than the rule, though a broody one is exactly that exception. So a smooth, hoseable box removes daytime harbourage rather than protecting a sleeping bird.

Two caveats keep this from being a clean win. A folded-edge steel box has seams and hollow sections of its own, and mites shelter in those as happily as in a wooden joint, which is why the classic trap for them is a hollow perch. And in North America the mite most keepers meet is the northern fowl mite, which spends its whole life cycle on the bird. Against that one the material of your nest box changes nothing at all.

The tradeoff is temperature. Metal is cold to the touch in winter and doesn't insulate the way timber does. In practice the bedding does that work rather than the box, so a deep, dry layer of shavings or straw matters more here than in a wooden unit. It's a reason to bed generously, not a reason to avoid metal.

The mounting decision does more for hygiene than the material does, and the rule every source agrees on is that the roost must be the highest perch in the coop. Chickens sleep on the highest thing available, so a box level with or above the roost becomes a bed, and a bird that sleeps in a nest box fills it with droppings overnight. Extension guidance splits on whether boxes should sit low or merely below the roost, and a sloped cover over the lid settles the argument either way by making the top unusable.

Cleaner boxes also mean cleaner eggs, which decides how much handling those eggs need later. Our guide to washing and storing fresh eggs explains why an egg that never got dirty is worth more than one you cleaned well.

Value

The value case rests on the roll-away, not on the metal. Among the boxes on this page it's the cheapest way to get eggs rolling out of reach as they're laid, and that feature normally carries a clear premium. Set against a plain wooden box it also wins on lifespan in a damp coop, since galvanized steel doesn't swell, rot or split.

Two honest qualifications. Per compartment it's the most expensive box here, so if you need six or eight nests the larger roll-away units work out cheaper per hen. And at three or four hens a single box is plenty, which makes two empty compartments money that would do more as run space.

Who it suits

• Flocks of roughly six to twelve hens, where three boxes is the right number rather than an excess.
• Damp climates and coops that have already eaten a wooden nest box or two.
• Anyone who has fought red mite and wants fewer places for them to shelter.
• Keepers who would rather hose a box out than replace it.

Who should skip it

• Very small flocks, where one box does the job and the extra compartments are wasted money.
• Anyone who can't mount it below roost height, since a badly placed box gets slept in whatever it's made of.
• Anyone who needs confirmed compartment sizing before buying, given the published dimensions don't reconcile with three standard nests.

The verdict

The material argument carries this one. Metal is the right choice for a nest box in most backyard coops, mites and cleaning being the reasons, and three holes at this price is good value for a flock of six to twelve. Bed it deeply, mount it below the roost, and check the edges when it arrives. For sizing and alternatives see our nest box guide, for the timing of that first egg see when hens start laying, and for keeping the whole coop cleanable see coop cleaning.