Adding a new chicken to a very small flock

[Ivytwilight]

I put a post on the SLWs thread yesterday and I was just assured that I do have two pullets! They look so different from each other now, so I was even more concerned. I am happy they are actually both ladies. They have now moved into a sectioned off part of the run full time. I let them out in the late evening to be together with the big girls. It is still slow. Plouffe has no issue with them, but Furbush will charge them more often than not if they get too close. Recently Skaggs charges right back! She is half her size but doesn't like to put up with anything. Both of them are little firecrackers! I have a feeling once she gets bigger there is going to be a shift of power. Maybe she will put Furbush in her place,finally. Poor Stubbs gets the worse of it and always seems to get herself stuck in a corner and is pecked. The poor girl. I must say it has gone a lot smoother than I originally thought. There was no commotion when we finally put them in the run and they have been happy in there for a couple weeks. So, they both live next to each other right now, but not with each other! What I don't get is, I will catch Furbush feeding the little ones through the chicken wire and purring at them. All four lie as close as they can to each other through the wire, but as soon as I let them all out together they run after one another. Chicken logic, huh?

The new run extension and dog...he likes to photo bomb. Each pair is living in one side for the time being.

Stubbs on the left and Skaggs on the right.


Stubbs is really beautiful and the photos don't do her lacing justice.

Looking at your photos I am reminded of how badly I need a new camera. I think ours is over 7 years old That is if I even use it and not just my phone. Your ladies are so cute! I love the sour cream on the faces. Mine tend towards frozen apple peels and bananas now that the temps are in the high 90s, almost 100. Again, super jealous of the trees and grass! I gave up with a garden in the backyard and just put it in the front where the chickens cannot go. They do work fast and devouring weeds and other plants I wish they didn't, but you can't have one without the other I suppose. I think when I finally do put them in the same coop I will try your trick and put them in late at night! Your little coop is so fricken cute as well!

 

[Hishigata]

I'm glad both Skaggs and Stubbs ended up being girls. They do look different, but it will just make it easier to tell them apart. I have never heard of chickens feeding one another through the fence but it sounds encouraging that they like to hang out even if only when there is a fence between them. Pepper and Nutmeg sometimes make a strange purr/rattle sound but that is usually when they are on hawk alert. I have no idea what it means. Let me know how the stealthy night introduction goes for you. It took a while for the new girls to learn to use the big house but now they are better trained than the older hens.

The weather here is quite hot recently. It was 108 yesterday and my thermometer read 103 even in the shade! The poor girls don't really do much in all this heat. Usually they just lie under the bushes panting and drink lots of water. I have been giving them grapes from the fridge but frozen banana and apple are a good idea. They always have energy for food.

One mystery of late is that one or possibly multiple girls have been laying shell-less eggs. I have found three soft leathery eggs in various spots around the yard in the past week. I am not sure who is doing it but I have started giving them all a cottage cheese treat most mornings. Hopefully that stops the squishy egg trend.

 

[Ivytwilight]

I am sorry to hear about the shell-less eggs!! I hope you can figure out who it is and get it under control!
I finally did introduce the girls, but not in the fashion I had wished. We have also had terribly heat and last Saturday it was 113. I noticed about a week before that one of my older girls, Plouffe was starting to slow down. She would sit around a lot instead of foraging, and that Friday I thought, "Perhaps I should bring her in the house tomorrow and let her be in the AC."
My husband said to wait and see how they handled the extreme heat. We came home from shopping Saturday morning and I noticed only three chickens running to greet me at the run. I just knew something awful had happened to Plouffe. She was in the back of the run, under the ladder to the coop, laying on her side not moving. I picked her up and she was so terribly limp and still. She wasn't even panting, which I admit my chickens do even with a mister turned on over them. It is the nature of living in the desert. I rushed her inside and held her under a cold shower until she was completely drenched, then I sat her in front of a fan set to high. I thought she was going to die.
After a half an hour or so she finally opened her eyes, stood up, and immediately an egg fell out of her onto the floor. After which, she sat back down. I believe she must have been in the coop trying to lay an egg in the heat, over heated and fell from the coop where she remained until we came home. If we had been even ten minutes later I think she would have died.
The other three girls, however had no such issue with the heat. They went about their day as though nothing was any different. I always make sure they have large frozen blocks of ice with spinach, peaches, apples, whole wheat bread, and a tiny bit of scratch in it through out the day, plus containers of water I fill up for them to stand in and cool their feet. The paint-roller trays of water really seem to help the most, even more than the mister. The problem is Plouffe doesn't like to stand in the water and I fear she wasn't cooling herself down enough.
I was still pretty sure she wasn't going to make it. She wouldn't walk on her own and didn't make any effort to eat on her own all day. So that night, instead of having Furbush be alone in her side, we opened up the divider in the run and made it one big cage. We also took two sides off the coop for summer and replaced them with hardware wire for more ventilation. And after all those changes, which happened around 9pm the chickens were thoroughly flustered and down right confused. The little ones wouldn't go in the new coop until there was a HUGE dust storm that blew through with an evil purpose. It was an awful day for all the ladies, but I think because of all those upheavals they now abide each other in the run. They don't care to be close to on another and Furbush still gets a peck in here and there, but they are all now living together, albeit the little ones sleep outside on a roost of their own most the time.
We brought our smaller cage inside for Plouffe and put it in the kitchen. I fed her a mixture of hard boiled egg yolk mushed and Pedialyte with a syringe all Saturday evening. She seemed to recover some Sunday and made an effort to eat some hard boiled egg on her own, but nothing else. Monday she became worse. She had large amounts of runny poo on her bum and it was caught in her feathers. I put her in a luke warm bath for about fifteen minutes and she just lay there and looked up at me like "Why is all this happening?" After the bath I kept her wrapped in a towel for half an hour and had to force feed the mixture of Pedialyte and yolk. She didn't want to eat or drink, but after a while she started to want to drink it and then started to eat yolk on her own. That evening she was doing better, but seemed depressed so I thought I would bring in Furbush for a visit. Bad Idea! Furbush went right at her trying to get on her back and kill her. The poor girl. I thought she was so sick Furbush's instincts took over and she didn't want anything to do with a weak link. So Furbush was put back outside. Tuesday Plouffe was feeling better and has been okay since then. There was a storm that cooled things down into the 80s and she went out with the other girls to play in the puddles. She goes out at night and spends the morning in the run with everyone else, but afternoons she comes in and sleeps in her cage. The house smells awful, but as long as it works for her. She simply cannot deal with the heat. I am still cautious about her recover as she has not laid another egg since Saturday, but she is eating and drinking normally now. We will see.
So, all my girls are now living together, much sooner than I had thought and in a way I would have never imagined. They tolerate each other, but Furbush is one mean headmistress. We will see how the pecking order changes, if at all when the SWLs get a little older. I hope your girls are dealing with the heat better than poor Plouffe. Keep cool and healthy!

 

[Hishigata]

Ivy: I am so sorry to hear about Plouffe's bout of heat exhaustion. I lost a Rhode Island Red, Paprika, to heat exhaustion last year and nearly lost Salt as well. Losing Paprika prompted me to get the new girls and start this thread! When Salt got sick, I rushed her inside and made a little bed for her. She would not eat or drink unless I dipped her beak in sugar water at which point she made a lack luster effort to swallow. Her poo was runny and green and she also got a bad case of pasty butt. She was motionless and pale all night and I finally brought Pepper in to stay with her. I think Pepper was in shock from seeing Paprika die because she was very docile, almost in a daze, all evening. I had no cage so I placed Pepper on a small two step ladder to roost, and placed Salt in her box on the floor beside the ladder in the study. It was a tough time and both Salt and Pepper developed fowl pox right after that incident. Neither laid an egg for 3 weeks but both are back to fighting fit today. Salt sometimes gets a bit pale on really hot days and lays in a damp spot by the garden hose to cool down.



Salt in her intensive care box.

I would guess you may have to wait a week before Plouffe lays again as most of her energy will be spent recovering. While it is not the best way for the new girls to meet, it sounds like it went over fairly well. Pepper gave the new girls some stern pecks during the first month before things mellowed out. Hopefully Furbish will mellow out especially in the afternoons when she is out numbered by newbies while Plouffe has her siesta. Best wishes for a speedy recovery and smooth transition for Skaggs and Stubbs.

 

[Chicks and Hens]

I have the same question can I only add one? Is that fair? But I have 6 healthy 5 month olds and a neighbor want us to have her 1 year old who lays eggs that they got at a chicken run and do I have to quarintine??

 

[Ivytwilight]

When I tried adding one it did not go well, but maybe because you have more than three it will go better? Perhaps she could just blend in...or they will bully her just as mine did. I did quarantine the Silkie I got before I tried adding her, and good thing I did. She showed signs of upper respiratory issues within days of being at the house. She was sneezing and had snot running of her nose like crazy. We treated that, kept her in the house separated from the other hens out back for about a month. I was crazy sure to wash my hands and even changed my footwear when I went between the girls throughout the day. I'm happy I did it. After the month when I introduced her she was bullied so badly we had to find her another home with other Silkies. That's not much help at all is it? I think you might have a better time at it if your girls are all standard sized and you have more of an actual flock with six birds, and just not three angry Doms. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Update on the girls:
All four of them are now getting along fairly well. We had a few mornings of noise when the SLWs started to lay eggs and Plouffe refused to let anyone else in the coop when she was laying. She would cause quite the scene and chased the new ones away from the boxes. She wouldn't let them near until she was finished with her business. Luckly, that only last for a few days, and now everyone seems to have an egg laying schedule down where they do not bother one another. All seems to be going well and a pecking order has been established with one of the SLWs being second in command, so to speak. The other SLW is last in the pecking order and still gets bullied from time to time, but not too harshly. They've even started to eat treats together!

 

[Chicks and Hens]

The neighbors will not stop giving us chickens !!!! well the new chicken is doing well she is around the top of the pecking order and my new Jersey giant is beat up but we figured that out too. SO now we have 8 chickens and only 2 lay. So I guess we are okay now! Thank you for the tips!!!!!!

 

[Mettomom]

Hi All,

I have a flock of three. Unfortunately one of my darling chicks turned out to be a Roo and I cant keep him in my area. So I am left with a 10 week old Buff and a 10 week old Welsummer. They get along great. They are calm and playful. I would love to get another chick, but I am concerned for the safety etc. since they are still young, do you all think it would be ok... any feedback would be so appreciated


Thanks in advance.

 

[Ivytwilight]

When I tried adding just one more bird to two birds it did not go well. And now that I have four they are actually quieter than when I had two or three. Four seems to be the magic number. As long as you get a chick around the same size as the two you already have you can give it a go. Introduce slowly if there seems to be some aggression issues. Yours are young enough you might not need to worry so much about just adding one bird. But my personal experience with three, and then two, and then four chickens, I would say three was the worst number when it came to noise and someone was always left out. I don't know if that is helpful at all. Good luck and tell us how it all goes!

 

[Hishigata]

I agree, with Ivy. If they are all still chicks, it is easier to add another chick now rather than waiting. That being said, chicks can be surprisingly mean. If you don't already, I would use a red tinted heat lamp. If the new one gets pecked and bleeds the light will disguise it so she does not continue to get pecked where she is injured.