Shea

Finding it under the roost rather than in the nest box is also a first-timer thing. They lay it wherever they happen to be until the nesting instinct kicks in properly. Give it a fortnight.

A big rug helps more than you'd think, and costs an afternoon rather than a weekend. Not a purist answer but a real one for a first winter.

Classic. Float test the ones you found before eating any — in a bowl of water, sinkers are fine, floaters go in the bin.

Check for a hidden nest before anything else. Four birds stopping on the same day is behaviour, not biology — real laying problems come on staggered. Keep them shut in the coop and run for three full days; if eggs appear, you had a nest under a hedge somewhere.

If they're still empty after three days confined, then look at daylight hours and at whether anything is spooking them at night. A fox that can't get in but visits nightly will shut down laying completely and you'll never see it.

Leave a hand's width behind it permanently. Combined with the extractor fix I'd expect the patch not to come back next winter.

Check what's on the other side of that wall too. A cupboard against it, a fridge pushed tight to it, or furniture blocking air movement will create a local cold spot for exactly this reason. Pulling a wardrobe 10cm off a wall has fixed this for more than one person I know.

Age gap matters. 18 weeks against fully mature hens is a bit young — pullets integrate more smoothly once they're laying themselves, because their status changes. You're at the awkward point. It should ease as they come into lay.

Worth checking where the draught actually comes from before you spend anything. A stick of incense or a lit match held near the joints on a windy day will show you — often a good chunk is coming through the box behind the frame rather than at the meeting rail, and that's a different fix.

That'll be the pocket cover or a gap where the box meets the reveal. Silicone or a timber fillet from inside once you've located it, and don't seal the top of the box — the weights need air and so does the timber.

Your vents are in the wrong place. Ventilation has to be above the birds' heads, not level with them — warm damp air rises off the roost, hits the cold roof panel, condenses and falls back on them. Vents at roost height do almost nothing for that and they also put a draught straight across the birds, which is worse for them than cold.

Cut openings in the gable ends right up under the ridge, cover with hardware cloth, and leave them open permanently. Rough guide is about 1 square foot of vent per bird for a coop your size, which sounds like a lot until you realise damp is what causes frostbite, not cold.

It is, and it feels wrong the first winter. But chickens are wearing a down jacket — they handle dry cold to well below freezing. What kills them is sitting in a humid box breathing ammonia.

Peg it every 30cm with proper ground staples and put a few inches of soil or bark over the top. After a month of grass growth you won't know it's there.

Hardware cloth, and you don't need to bury it. Lay a 60cm apron flat on the ground all the way round the outside, pegged down, and let the grass grow through it. Diggers start right at the base of the fence, hit wire, and don't think to back up and start further out. It's less work than trenching and works just as well.

Electric is excellent as a deterrent but it fails in ways buried mesh doesn't — vegetation shorts it out, the battery dies, the fox learns where the gap is. In a small garden where you can't get much distance between the wire and the fence, I'd take the mesh.

One thing people forget in a conversion flat: ask whether the supply and the meter position are shared, and whether any of your circuits pass through common areas. That can complicate a rewire in ways that don't show up until the electrician is standing there.