allebasi4
Songster
Hi,
I'm needing some advice for introducing younger chickens. I have 3 standard 10 week old pullets and two 10 week old Seramas. They grew up together and are perfectly happy together but I'm wanting to eventually move the 3 bigger girls in with my existing flock consisting of four 7 month old barnyard mixes (1 cockerel & 3 pullets). I'm not going to be moving the Seramas over.
The younger chickens have been living next to the older chickens for about 4 weeks now. They're able to see and interact with each other through the hardware cloth but no touching. Today I decided to try to let the 3 younger girls free range with the grownups and everything went fine for a few minutes. The older pullets did the normal pecking order stuff, nothing too crazy but then my rooster seemed to try to mate with the younger pullets (dropped wing dance) but when that didn't work he went after them and chomped down on their necks which resulted in a lot of little chicken screams/running. Nobody is hurt but we quickly separated them cause I didn't want to know what might happen if we let them at it. I just cant tell if my rooster is being straight-up aggressive or if he'll knock it off eventually.
It would be nice to be able to let them range together, and I will have to have them live together in the coop eventually but I'm not in a huge rush. The last thing I would want is for one of the new girls to get killed by him. I'm wondering if you guys think I should try again another day, or if I should wait until they're the same size as the older girls.
Thanks for reading!
I'm needing some advice for introducing younger chickens. I have 3 standard 10 week old pullets and two 10 week old Seramas. They grew up together and are perfectly happy together but I'm wanting to eventually move the 3 bigger girls in with my existing flock consisting of four 7 month old barnyard mixes (1 cockerel & 3 pullets). I'm not going to be moving the Seramas over.
The younger chickens have been living next to the older chickens for about 4 weeks now. They're able to see and interact with each other through the hardware cloth but no touching. Today I decided to try to let the 3 younger girls free range with the grownups and everything went fine for a few minutes. The older pullets did the normal pecking order stuff, nothing too crazy but then my rooster seemed to try to mate with the younger pullets (dropped wing dance) but when that didn't work he went after them and chomped down on their necks which resulted in a lot of little chicken screams/running. Nobody is hurt but we quickly separated them cause I didn't want to know what might happen if we let them at it. I just cant tell if my rooster is being straight-up aggressive or if he'll knock it off eventually.
It would be nice to be able to let them range together, and I will have to have them live together in the coop eventually but I'm not in a huge rush. The last thing I would want is for one of the new girls to get killed by him. I'm wondering if you guys think I should try again another day, or if I should wait until they're the same size as the older girls.
Thanks for reading!
