11 week old pullets

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Shen11

Chirping
Jan 4, 2024
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Hi everyone. Due to life, timing, availability, and one of our elderly hens dying in the heat wave, we are now at day 1 in the process of introducing two 11 week marans to our two 6 year old barred rocks, and I have just a few questions. We have the run split in half with wire gates. The marans have water, grower feed, and a cat carrier of straw to hide in, while the barred rocks have their normal set up and access to the coop. Is that sufficient? I tried adding photos.
I know we ideally want to keep them seperate for a week, but where do the little ones sleep? Should we leave them out in the run, or put them in the cat carrier inside the coop? I've seen others suggest roosting them while the other hens are asleep, but they seem small for that. Its not possible to split up the roost. Any advice is appreciated! So far the barred rocks seem offended by them, and the marans are super calm.
 

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Welcome to Backyard Chickens. This is a great place to explore and hang out. I may suggest you have a good idea.
Cat carrier might need a bigger coop too? Give them like 2 days where you have it then move it closer. If there is pecking might build a new coop ?
 
pennyJo1960 said:
Welcome to Backyard Chickens. This is a great place to explore and hang out. I may suggest you have a good idea.
Cat carrier might need a bigger coop too? Give them like 2 days where you have it then move it closer. If there is pecking might build a new coop ?
Click to expand...
Well the coop is large enough for 4 hens comfortably, the design doesn't allow for us to easily seperate roosting areas. We do have a dog carrier thats bigger than the cat carrier, we could put that in the coop and put them to bed in there?
 
Hiya, and welcome to BYC! :frow

Other than concerns of them fitting in your coop someday, I do think your idea will work. The only problem is if you're grown chickens are especially aggressive and would go after them in your crate, but I doubt most would.

The rule of thumb for a coop for standard-sized chickens is 4 square feet per chicken. In a run, it's 15 square feet per chicken.

Much less than that can increase problems with them picking on each other.
 
Debbie292d said:
Hiya, and welcome to BYC! :frow

Other than concerns of them fitting in your coop someday, I do think your idea will work. The only problem is if you're grown chickens are especially aggressive and would go after them in your crate, but I doubt most would.

The rule of thumb for a coop for standard-sized chickens is 4 square feet per chicken. In a run, it's 15 square feet per chicken.

Much less than that can increase problems with them picking on each other.
Click to expand...
Thank you, we definitely designed the coop with square footage minimums in mind. We can only have 4 birds at a time, so now that 2 have passed, we are replenishing the flock. My main question isnt about whether they will fit, but whether we should leave the in a dog crate either inside or outside the coop at night time? Whenever the time comes for them to roost with the resident hens, we wont have a way to keep them seperated on the roosting bars. Sorry if my initial post was confusing
 

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