We evaluated whether hens started using different vegetative communities with the onset of egg laying to see if perhaps vegetation for nesting was limited within their home ranges. We measured vegetation at thousands of locations along movement paths that hens walked the day they laid the first egg in the nest. We found that the average vegetation height at the nest site was met or exceeded at most points along travel paths. Our findings indicate that vegetation conditions selected by hens at nest sites were generally available on the landscape they traveled when they selected their nest site, which suggests that adequate nest sites from a vegetation standpoint were not limited.
