Adding a couple adult hens to a group of juvies

My1stChickens

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I've read a lot about how to add littles to a flock of bigs-- but have not seen anything about doing the opposite. I have 8 chickens that are a couple months old, thus no eggs for several more months. Part of me says just be patient, you can gather eggs in 3-4 more months. Part of me is considering getting a couple hens that are already laying-- so I can have some eggs NOW.

I have separate facilities, but at some point I would want to put them all together. How long do I wait, and is there a way to get this done with minimal drama? If it's a bad idea, I can just buy eggs til fall..... but it would be nice to have backyard eggs now that I'm doing all this tending of backyard chickens.....
 
There are pros and cons, like most everything.

Biggest pro is eggs now....or sooner.
But, stress from moving into a new place can halt egg production for a couple days or a couple weeks or a couple months, so no guarantee there.

Biggest con would be the bio quarantine aspect...you don't want to bring pests and/or disease to your young flock and facilities. True bio quarantine is difficult to manage.

Integration is integration and if you have 2 facilities there are probably several options that might fit your situation depending on the facilities.

Will just paste my notes here, something there might help..or you may have seen it all already.



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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