Adding 4 10 week old pullets to my flock

[Mike26726]

My flock is small already. I have 4 other hens and 1 cockerel they are all 13 weeks old. What would be the easiest way to integrate my new girls to the flock with out much incident

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

Since they are all about the same age I would just put them together. Watch for bullying but let them establish the pecking order. Don't allow them to draw blood, but you should see some pecking.

Some people like to put the new ones on the roost at night so when they all wake up together in the coop the old ones will hopefully be nicer to them. But I don't do it because I like to observe for a couple of hours when I add new chickens and would be worried about bullying going on inside the coop in the morning before the door opens.

 

[Mike26726]

I placed them in there together a couple times today. My red sex links grab and push them to the ground which concerned me. The cockerel I plan to keep is very sweet to the new girls. He scratches the ground with them and seems to coral (sp) them from the others. From what I saw so far the older ones will pick at them for a bit then go about their business. I placed my new girls in the coop in a cage so they can't get hurt tonight but plan to start all over tomorrow.

 

[aart]

It's not clear to me how many birds are new and how many birds are existing and how old the exiting ones are.

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

 

[Mike26726]

My existing flock are all 13 weeks old. My new ones are 10 weeks. I have them together now they seem to be doing ok now. They got grassed for a while the first day so I kept them in a cage inside the coop. On day 2 they got picked at a little. To help I kept giving treats every time they got aggressive and they stopped eventually.