When I first started raising chickens one of the things that someone felt the need to
tell me was don't stick younger chickens in with older chickens because older chickens
will often times peck and sometimes kill younger chicks.
On the surface that would seem true but the inference is that chickens are somehow able
to place a point of reference on another chickens age and therefore pick on them based on that
criteria.
And that is not necessarily what is happening when you place a new chicken into an existing
flock.
What you are doing is you are messing with the pecking order that has already been long
established.
And like a lot of things in nature.
Sometimes the assimilation of a new chicken whether that chicken be old young or the same
age can sometimes get messy.
So our job as humans is to help ease that transition.
Now I've had some people ask me for advise on how to place new chickens into an existing
flock and then they always come back to me later and say well I tried all your suggestions
but it didn't work because I still see them pecking at each other.
That is not an indication of whether or not what you did and how long you did them for
worked or didn't work.
Because what you are not going to do is your not going to be completely removing all of
the violence and all of the messiness that goes with along with taking a new chicken
and assimilating her into an existing flock.
But what we can do is help manage it.
Now I have a two by two cage that I will actually stick a chicken in.
And then I'll take that two by two cage and I'll stick it inside the run.
Then that allows all of my current chickens to at least see and be around the new chicken.
Now in my instance here this chicken is actually one that has already been a part of this flock.
So there is a little bit of familiarity there.
However, she has been away for about three or four weeks now and that is long enough
for her to lose her place in the pecking order.
So there will be some point of reference that these chickens will be able to have and so
that'll make the transition back into the flock a little bit easier and a little bit
quicker.
But if your starting with a brand new chicken that your flock has never seen before this
may actually take three four days.
I've seen it go up to a week before I felt comfortable putting the new chicken in with
the existing flock.
Now I'll make sure that she has some food and some water all to her self.
These rabbit waterers work pretty well for chickens too.
All they do is peck the ball on the end of the waterer and they can get there water.
Now in this instance because this chicken has already been a part of this flock at one
point, probably just one day inside the cage is all I'm going to do.
Then when the sun goes down and all the rest of the chickens go into the chicken coop and
bed down for the night.
What I will do is I'll come back over here and then I'll take the new chicken out of
the two by two cage and then stick her inside the chicken coop.
That way when the sun comes up in the morning.
She is there, they are there, and it's like it's just the way that it is always suppose
to be.
And I'l always find that in the morning chickens are just really calm when the sun comes up
and it's almost like she is suppose to be there.
Now that is for my situation here and my situation is actually a little bit simpler than if your
just bringing in brand new chickens.
Especially if your new chickens are younger and most importantly smaller.
because often times a pecking order is going to be established based on the size of a bird.
For the most part.
It's not always that way.
But it just seems to be a rule of thumb to go by that the larger the breed the higher
in the pecking order they are.
However, some breeds are just naturally more aggressive then others and will take on bigger
animals.
Also some of this is going to be determined based on what breed of birds that you have
in your existing flock already and what breed of bird that your trying to introduce to them.
If you have a bunch of buff orpintons.
They are a very laid back and docile kind of breed of chickens.
So they are a little more accepting of new chickens.
However, if you have a flock of rhode island reds, they can get very aggressive towards
new birds.
Especially if those new birds are not the same breed.
So if I have an existing flock of rhode Island reds and I'm trying to introduce a more docile
type of chicken breed to them such as the buff orpinton.
I'll actually leave the buff orpinton in the cage for a longer period of time.
Maybe up to a week.
I'll leave her in the cage before I take her out and let them have physical contact with
each other.
Also here I'm only introducing one bird, but if you have multiple birds that you want to
introduce to your existing flock.
Obviously a two by two cage is not going to work for you if you have five or six birds
that you want to introduce.
So my suggestion and what I have done in the past is actually partition off a part of your
existing run.
Let the new birds have part of it and your existing birds to have the other part.
But you always want your existing flock to have the major portion of the run that your
going to partition off.
So if you have a sixteen by eight run, you don't want to just split it right in half
and let your new birds have half of it and your existing birds have the other half.
What you want is you want a majority of that run to be for your existing flock. because
it is there territory.
And you don't want your new birds to be able to go to far away from your existing ones.
You always want them to be in close proximity to each other because if they are not then
they are not ever going to get used to each other and your just wasting your time.
If the new birds that you are trying to introduce are physically smaller than your existing
flock.
I would actually hesitate introducing them at that stage.
I would actually wait until they get a little bit closer to the same size as your existing
flock.
Because I have never had great success at smaller birds being integrated into that type
of a situation.
Now one of the suggestions that I have heard in a situation like that where you have smaller
birds.
Is to give them a place where they can go and hide and the older bigger birds are not
able to get into that place.
However, you do sort of run the gauntlet with that when the smaller birds start to get larger
in size.
They can't get in there either, but they can still get like the first half of themselves
in there.
So they have there tails sticking out.
I've seen some pretty messed up stuff happen when that happens.
Because the other birds will come along and peck all the feathers off the back end.
And if they start pecking at the vent then your going to end up with some mortality in
that situation.
I've seen it where a younger bird has tried to take cover under something.
Only there was in and an out to it and so the tail was unprotected and then the head
actually came out the other side and was unprotected.
Once chickens get cornered often times what they will do is they will just hunker down
and not move.
Then that will just leave them easy pickings for the other birds.
Needless to say that was a mortality there because the things that these chickens can
do to other chickens is a hard thing to watch.
So you want to be careful when your giving hiding spots that you don't give them a place
where they can go and then just hunker down but they are not fully protected.
because that leaves them in a very bad spot that you don't want them to be put in.
really what you want is you want your run to be big enough.
That is really the main thing.
If your run is big enough where the new birds can get away from your existing flock.
Then that is the best of all worlds because the last thing that you want is for a bird
to get cornered and then have it hunker down and get picked on because that will be the
end of that bird.
So areas that you are going to want to be mindful of are inside the chicken coop.
You don't want areas where a smaller bird can fit between the wall of the chicken coop
and a nest box and then not be able to get out.
In fact that is one of the things that I look for when I have to introduce new chickens
to the flock.
If you raise chickens for any length of period of time and you start out with a fresh flock.
You raise them up eventually your going to have mortality and your going to want to introduce
new chickens.
That is just the way it goes if you do this for any length of period of time.
It can be done.
It can be done safely and the transition doesn't have to be a murderous one.
So hopefully this helps, if you have any questions leave them down below I generally check all
the comments and answer questions where needed.
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