Adding To Your Flock

Nice article on adding new chickens to an existing flock. It could be improved by adding more pictures.

All good advice. I was especially interested in the section about introducing new chickens and quarantining.

A very good article if you want to add more (almost) adult chickens to you’re flock.
Very good to warn that adding chicks to a flock is a no go.

But there is another way go get a bigger flock. Let the ladies go broody and let them hatch some eggs. There are articles about natural breeding with fertile eggs (if you have a rooster. Or you can buy fertile eggs from someone who has a great flock or a beautiful breed.

One of the advantages of breeding and hatching eggs is that their are very few diseases that you can bring in to you're flock this way. An other pro is that the mother hen protects her baby chicks agains flock members. A con is that half of the offspring will be male. You have to think about what you will do with a surplus of roosters.

Thanks for writing a well informed piece.

Really helpful and thorough

I never knew how important it was to quarantine, this article is very informative and helpful.

important info

Wonderful ideas to use, we bought all our chickens at the same time. However, we had to pull an ill one and are now ready to reintroduce to the flock. Nice to read what other have already tired.

Great article on reading how to introduce new chickens to your flock! I wasn't sure about the whole quarantine thing and learned some new things about the pecking order I didn't know as well. Thanks for writing!

You covered all the basics and much more. Excellent job!

I enjoyed reading about the different ways of introducing new birds to your flock.

Informative and detailed article. Thank you

This article should be required reading for anyone wanting to add new birds to their existing flock!

Excellent advice from a pro. I felt this article gave guidance that was needed because I am fairly new to chick raising.

I have four 6 week-old chicks that I was looking forward to introducing to my three year-old hens. I may wait another week or two. Three of the chicks are about the same size as my hens; however I do have a Bantam that is small, but feisty. I don't want him to be targeted so I may just put off introductions for another week or so. The chicks have been in a brooder that has been inside of the main coop, so everyone has been able to see and not touch either other for about three weeks now. I will updated after introductions!

The author compiles notable advice from several BYC members in to one location.
The health of your original flock is preserved by quarantine guidelines. Integrating new birds with your flock is a good section with loads of examples.

Thank you for the valuable information? I really appreciate that you included several other members thoughts and recommendations! I'm feeling a little more secure about integrating my new pellets and my Broody silkie and chicks.