Adding new chicks?

NicChick

In the Brooder
Apr 19, 2015
10
0
22
Hi All,
We have 17 beautiful 2 week old girls (Barred Rocks, Orphingtons, Rhode Island Reds) and while at the feed store today I saw they had "Americanas" and I couldn't help myself so I bought 5 of them. They can't be more than 3 days old. Now I have them home, in a separate makeshift brooder, and my questions is- when would you put them in with the other girls? I want to protect my 2 week olds from any diseases, and I want to protect the tiny ones from being bullied or stressed. There is quite a size difference! TIA! :)
 
At three days old they should be over the just hatched shakeiness. You can put them together now. Two weeks is around the age difference they can easily handle. I would put something in the brooder to break up the line of sight. You also should have a large brooding area for the now 22 chicks. Crowding is a prime reason for aggression. Around a square foot per chick. They will quickly grow to fill that space and need more.
 
Thanks. I don't need to be worried about keeping them separate for disease spreading potential? I'm a little annoyed with myself, I impulse-bought because I wanted the novelty of EEs, but pretty sure they aren't even what they were marked as- probably Australorps & SL Wyandottes. Which is fine, I will still love them, but I didn't NEED them, and don't want any issues with stress/bullying/disease just because I am silly & didn't do my research first to know how to identify breed types and properly introduce new chicks to older chicks. They ARE quickly outgrowing our brooder set up, but we have a brand new 8'x12' coop for them to move into- I just want to wait as long as possible since it's a little cool out still, and they'll be too small to do much outside time for a while yet.
 
The disease thing is probably not an issue if they are day olds.
You might be able to mix them in the brooder, I had trouble with 2 week age difference chicks tho...
...ended up using a dog crate right next to the brooder until they were old enough to go outside, but still had to separate with an escape pen for the littlest.


Here's some notes I've taken on integration that I found to be very helpful.......
......take what applies or might help and ignore the rest.
See if any of them, or the links provided at the bottom, might offer some tips that will assist you in your situation:

Integration of new chickens into flock.


Consider medical quarantine:
BYC Medical Quarantine Article
Poultry Biosecurity
BYC 'medical quarantine' search

Confine new birds within sight but physically segregated from older/existing birds for several weeks, so they can see and get used to each other but not physically interact. Integrating new birds of equal size works best.

For smaller chicks I used a large wire dog crate right in the coop for the smallers. I removed the crate door and put up a piece of wire fencing over the opening and bent up one corner just enough for the smallers to fit thru but the biggers could not. Feed and water inside the crate for the smallers. Make sure the smallers know how to get in and out of the crate opening before exposing them to the olders. this worked out great for me, by the time the crate was too small for the them to roost in there(about 3 weeks), they had pretty much integrated themselves to the olders.

If you have too many smallers to fit in a crate you can partition off part of the coop with a wire wall and make the same openings for smallers escape.


The more space, the better. Birds will peck to establish dominance, the pecked bird needs space to get away. As long as there's no blood drawn and/or new bird is not trapped/pinned down, let them work it out. Every time you interfere or remove new birds, they'll have to start the pecking order thing all over again.

Multiple feed/water stations. Dominance issues are most often carried out over sustenance, more stations lessens the frequency of that issue.

Places for the new birds to hide out of line of sight and/or up and away from any bully birds.

Read up on integration..... BYC advanced search>titles only>integration
This is good place to start reading:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/adding-to-your-flock
 

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