It sounds like you have a few different things going on. With your current temperatures in Bakersfield, lows in the lower 40’s, you still have two to three weeks to go before I’d leave the chicks outside without heat.
You are dealing with living animals so no one can tell you exactly what will happen, but I fully agree with others, your window of opportunity of her raising them has long passed. While you may occasionally get a hen that will adopt any chick, hens and chicks normally imprint on each other within the first few days. After that, most know who family is. Even if your broody tried to adopt them, the chicks might not accept it.
Different people integrate chicks at different ages. Some of that comes with experience. Your specific conditions and methods have a lot of effect on what might work best for you. To me the biggest factor is how much room you have. The less room you have the older they need to be. There are a few tricks that help too, like housing them side by side for a week or more before you let them mix so they get used to each other and providing separate feeding and watering stations so they can eat and drink without challenging the older chickens.
It sounds like you have more than one broody hen with her own chicks. Many people have different broodies raising chickens in the same area. These may be broody hens working together to raise the same chicks or it may be broody hens with their own chicks. Again how much room they have is important, the more room the better, but many people are really pleased with how well this works out. But occasionally there are serious problems. Two broodies may fight over the chicks, whether they were previously working together or if they have separate broods. One hen may want to raise them all herself. Or one hen may see the other chicks as rivals to hers and try to eliminate the rivals. They are living animals. I don’t know what will happen to yours.
I really like a broody hen to raise her chicks with the flock. Mama handles integration so I don’t have to worry about it. The chicks will still have to manage their own pecking order issues when they eventually mature, but as long as they have room to void the older chickens until they do mature, things usually work out fine. I’ve had a broody hen wean her chicks at 3 weeks old (during warm weather) and hens wean them as late as 10 weeks. Those chicks have always been fine with the flock without a broody protecting them after they are weaned, but the Mama hen spent a lot of time and effort teaching the other hens that these chicks had a right to be in the flock.
Hopefully this will help some. Good luck!
You are dealing with living animals so no one can tell you exactly what will happen, but I fully agree with others, your window of opportunity of her raising them has long passed. While you may occasionally get a hen that will adopt any chick, hens and chicks normally imprint on each other within the first few days. After that, most know who family is. Even if your broody tried to adopt them, the chicks might not accept it.
Different people integrate chicks at different ages. Some of that comes with experience. Your specific conditions and methods have a lot of effect on what might work best for you. To me the biggest factor is how much room you have. The less room you have the older they need to be. There are a few tricks that help too, like housing them side by side for a week or more before you let them mix so they get used to each other and providing separate feeding and watering stations so they can eat and drink without challenging the older chickens.
It sounds like you have more than one broody hen with her own chicks. Many people have different broodies raising chickens in the same area. These may be broody hens working together to raise the same chicks or it may be broody hens with their own chicks. Again how much room they have is important, the more room the better, but many people are really pleased with how well this works out. But occasionally there are serious problems. Two broodies may fight over the chicks, whether they were previously working together or if they have separate broods. One hen may want to raise them all herself. Or one hen may see the other chicks as rivals to hers and try to eliminate the rivals. They are living animals. I don’t know what will happen to yours.
I really like a broody hen to raise her chicks with the flock. Mama handles integration so I don’t have to worry about it. The chicks will still have to manage their own pecking order issues when they eventually mature, but as long as they have room to void the older chickens until they do mature, things usually work out fine. I’ve had a broody hen wean her chicks at 3 weeks old (during warm weather) and hens wean them as late as 10 weeks. Those chicks have always been fine with the flock without a broody protecting them after they are weaned, but the Mama hen spent a lot of time and effort teaching the other hens that these chicks had a right to be in the flock.
Hopefully this will help some. Good luck!
