Adding three 2wk old keets to four 10 wk old keets?

[Paradisewife]

My 10wk old micro-flock of 4-Guineas-who-bonded-with-an-ancona-cockerel, are doing great ,

but somehow 'we' rescued three 1-2 wk old keets. (Said rescue included 4 Turkens.) Can we integrate the new guineas into the existing flock?


When? How? They're maybe 2 weeks old - wait until they're older and do the see-no-touch type intro like with chickens?

I'm sure Mr Britches (The roo) will either simplify or complicate the situation.

Any tips?

 

[R2elk]

My 10wk old micro-flock of 4-Guineas-who-bonded-with-an-ancona-cockerel, are doing great ,

but somehow 'we' rescued three 1-2 wk old keets. (Said rescue included 4 Turkens.) Can we integrate the new guineas into the existing flock?

When? How? They're maybe 2 weeks old - wait until they're older and do the see-no-touch type intro like with chickens?

I'm sure Mr Britches (The roo) will either simplify or complicate the situation.

Any tips?

I would wait until the new keets are off of supplemental heat before trying to integrate them.

Personally, I will not brood keets and chicks together because of the problems caused by the imprinting when they are older.

Everything can seem great right up until the first breeding season. Guineas have entirely different instincts than any other poultry.

 

[Paradisewife]

Thank you @R2elk, I've certainly been reading and learning a LOT. Enough that when we separated the original 4 keets from the 8 chicks, I wasn't particularly happy when it was decided that 'that crazy Ancona is going in with them'. But, Pick your battles.
We coop the guineas at night in a coop with a small netted run, until after morning feeding and then free range them with: the other 7 hatch-mates (1 cockerel & 6 pullets) and 11 other hens of varying ages (5-8). We lost our last rooster in March, thus the 10 wk olds. Zero issues so far, regarding the guineas, anyway.
I know. they're still young....no hormones, yet.
I'll probably be back for more advice - thanks again.

 

[SamLockwood]

As someone who's into their 3rd year with a mixed flock, it can be dicey at times. I have a large-ish flock (around 3 dozen birds in the permanent flock at any given time) and they have about 5 acres to free-range on.

I find the guineas have a sort fo split personality. In the winter time they're very group-oriented and get along fairly well with the chickens they coexist with.

Spring and early summer are bad times, the females get extremely noisy and the males get very aggressive: they do a lot of chasing and feather breaking / pulling as they sort out which mates to pair off with. Chickens and other poultry will get stressed out if you don't have multiple food & water sources and somewhere to go that's out of sight of the crazy mating-season guineas.

Even at the best of times guineas are very pushy birds, and they'll tend to want to have first dibs on things like food, water, treats, and roosting space. If your chickens won't accept that the guineas are the bosses then you will have trouble. Mine even when they're on good behavior have a habit of staking out a chunk of territory and chasing all the chickens out of it.

Guineas like a lot of room. I'd say on any given day they cover at least three times the territory my chickens do when free-ranging. They tend to get tetchy if there's bad weather or I have to put them on "flockdown" due to a predator problem. If you're space is limited or you planning on keeping them cooped up all the time you're going to have problems with guineas.