Introducing different age chicks?

Hi, I am new to the forum and to raising chickens. I ordered six buff orpington chicks and they are now four weeks old. I thought it was suspicious when I got them because they were striped. I contacted the company and sent a picture. It turns out that they are Buff Star (some kind of lighter red star?). I thought I would just give them away to my neighbor and I told the company that they could send me a reship of the orpingtons.

I notice my neighbors hens are not very pleasant to each other (some are missing many feathers and some blood) and now I am attached to the red stars and I am not sending them over to the neighbor. I got the six orpingtons this past monday. They are 1 week old today and the red stars are four weeks. The Red stars look HUGE and I have split the brooder box in half by putting a big piece of wood between them and each side has their own food and water and red light. How am I going to do this? Is it conceivable that these 12 will be able to get along, how do I introduce them? I'm scared. Those orpingtons are so small and those stars look like raptors.

I can tell you my solution, but cannot guarantee it will work. We put a hardware cloth screen in between the two ages of birds so they could see each other/get used to one another, but not have the ability to hurt each other. We called it "chick-tv", and believe me, they love to watch. Now, they socialize through the wire and hopefully I will integrate the two tiny flocks into one soon.

I have hatched chicks each week for the last couple of months. 10 - 15 each week. I keep the young ones in a brooder in the house for the first 2 weeks, then they move to a larger brooder in the barn with older birds. that brooder has them in there till they feather out, at which time they move out to an area in the barn pullets in once space, roos in another. I have chicks from 3.5 months to 2 weeks in this mix. The key is to not introduce 1 at a time and make sure they have plenty of space to seperated if need be. If yours are all girls. Give them another week and then let them together and keep an eye on them. I have 1 pullet that is the oldest. She is awesome. She is queen and amazingly, does not allow pecking in the ranks.

Hope this helps. Keep us in the loop.

New Chick Mom, thanks , Please let me know how it goes with yours. I put a screen between them today and am hoping that is a start for them. The big ones just seem to be doing a stare down thing with the little ones. Maybe I will give it two weeks or so with the screen before I make any attempts to get them all together.

Thanks for the advice from Three Boys too. I know I don't have any roosters in the older bunch, and I only ordered females in the young group so I hope they turn out to only be hens! I heard that red stars and orpingtons are friendly breeds, will that make a difference?

I've had minimal trouble mixing ages. As soon as they are a few days old I start tossing them in with older chicks. I've also had button quail, coturnix quail, and bantam chicks all in the same brooder and sometimes with multiple ages of one of those. The only time I had any trouble was some couple day old EE chicks I got from the feed store that I tried to put in with 6week old mostly feathered japanese bantams. The japs were such good flyers already that they keep leaping over the EE's heads and freaking them out. Gave the EE another 2 days to settle in, put 2 of the smaller japs with them, waited 3 more days, and then put them all back together without issue.

I do use very large brooders compared to the size of my chicks though. Then when they are 6-8weeks old I put them out in the coop which has 170sq ft so my chicks are never cramped. Although it is looking rather busy in there. There are 4 age groups with a little under 1 dozen to nearly 2 dozen per age group. I've lost count of the exact number running around out there.

You can try putting them together and see how it goes. I first put mine out together in the yard to free range with plenty of treats. Most of my hens accepted the pullets except two. I put them in chicken jail. There are pictures on my BYC Page.

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Not one at a time?
Well, I only have 2 americauna's. I ordered 2. One died. Her replacement came 2 weeks later. Now the older looks like a raptor & the younger is 1/8 the size. They are in same brooder w/the hardware cloth separating them. They talk together & cry for the other if I only have one out. They quiet right down once they can see each other. The little one seems to like the bigger one better than the reverse. I play with them loose on the floor-feeding & handling. I'm hoping they can be together in the same brooder soon. Occasionally Pecking at each other's feet for the most part.

Tractor supply said putting a small amount pine tar on their backs will prevent pecking? Has anyone heard of this technique?

KariKnitsNPurls said:

Not one at a time?
Well, I only have 2 americauna's. I ordered 2. One died. Her replacement came 2 weeks later. Now the older looks like a raptor & the younger is 1/8 the size. They are in same brooder w/the hardware cloth separating them. They talk together & cry for the other if I only have one out. They quiet right down once they can see each other. The little one seems to like the bigger one better than the reverse. I play with them loose on the floor-feeding & handling. I'm hoping they can be together in the same brooder soon. Occasionally Pecking at each other's feet for the most part.

Click to expand...

Totally normal....nothing to worry about.

KariKnitsNPurls said:

Tractor supply said putting a small amount pine tar on their backs will prevent pecking? Has anyone heard of this technique?

Click to expand...

No need for pine tar unless things get bloody.