Adding 2 mature chickens to a flock of teenagers

[rcm1201]

I currently have (5) 16 week olds - 4 white rocks and 1 buff orpington. A friend has (2) astralorpes that are just under 3 years old that he wants to give away to make room for some variety in his coop so I will be taking them. Any issues I should be prepared to face? Do I need to do anything in preparation for the intro into the flock? I'm new to chickens and my 16 week olds are all I have experienced thus far.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Ideally you'd want to biologically quarantine them for up to a month https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...nderestimated-part-of-raising-chickens.67097/ , but if you trust that your friend's birds don't have health or parasite issues you may decide to skip it. That's up to you to decide if you want to take that risk.

After that, or in lieu of that, you'd want to do a see but don't touch period of 1-2 weeks, depending on how the birds react to one another, where you have the newcomers separated via fencing from the existing birds so they can get used to each other without being able to peck one another.