Hi Hugh – The wren guard seems to be the defacto solution offered by many here but to our dismay, even with a 3″ clearance to the house opening, our EABL female refused to lay eggs until my husband removed it. I think the best thing to do is to try it and see if the female will go in or see if you have another egg the next day. We have a wren that is doing the exact same thing in our other box, so we’ve been keeping him busy by removing the sticks on a daily basis. It’s nerve-racking but seems to keep him preoccupied while we have a group of 7 day old chicks.
Deb thanks for the reply.
In our specific case the female is done laying and has been incubating for 3 days now. I suspect it would have been smarter to have try installing a guard before she was completely done laying but as they say ” hind sight is 20/20″. I’m worried that stopping incubation may be worse than a sight delay in adding eggs before incubation. It would seem there’s a whole lot of room for second guessing one’s self in this endeavor.
Hugh