Integrating young pullets with mature hens - what's the best age?

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Quote: Your space is going to be tight for integration. Where are your littles now? Can you put one or two of your middle of pecking order hens in with the littles in the run? Be sure they have plenty of hiding spaces, so they can get out of line of sight of the older birds. Try this for a day or two. You might even block off an area of your run to make a separate run within the run for the littles, with a small door so they can come and go, but the older birds can't get into the little's run. It would have to be covered. A tractor makes a great way to work on integration.

When I integrate, I have the littles in a run with a couple of small doors in the side that they can get through, but the adults can't follow them inside. Toss out some scratch so everyone has plenty of goodies to peck for. In a free range area, there are not as many territory issues. After a few days of free ranging together, I then work on getting them together in the run and coop situation, or open up the little's coop and run and let the adults in to mingle. This is not as easy as it used to be because hawk predation has become incredible. So, all of my future integration will have to be totally supervised by me, or under a covered run.
 

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