Adding new girls post-attack

[QueSeraSera]

My coop was broken into last night and we lost our favorite true Ameraucana girl. It seems like a raccoon since it managed to OPEN to sliding bolt latch, BUT it took the whole bird, which no carnage anywhere. All we found this morning were feathers. It grabbed a mouthful of silkie feathers, but she's fine. I don't know what's big enough to carry away a standard size bird and yet dexterous enough to open bolt latches, but that's where we're at.

Annnnnyway, I've been waiting and waiting to add a friend's small flock to ours (2 Ameraucanas and 1 Australorp) because I haven't had the energy to put up the divider in the run, etc. It seems like today might be just the right time since the girls are all sort of walking around in shock.

Yes? No? Thoughts? BTDT?

Thanks.

 

[silkensunlight]

We had this same thing happen to us earlier in the year. We lost 4 girls to a raccoon. We adopted a flock from a cousin and brought them home a few days later. We put them together late at night hoping they would wake up together and everyone would be ok. They were ok sort of. Two of the new girls stuck together and 4 of them stayed on the roost. The next day it was carnage. My original flock had devasted the new birds. We learned from that and built a new area for new birds before we made anymore additions. It's best if they have an area for a few weeks where they can look but not touch. After a couple weeks of that I free ranged them later in the day and watched how things progressed. Now they are happy all together like a big family!