Baby chicks under hen

[Paulandannmarie]

Hi Everyone

Last week we hatched some chicks under a broody in a separate coop within our larger coop. They have been in view of the other hens in the flock since they were born. I wondered if anyone can advise me on when it is best to allow them to mix. With mum digging so much some of the little ones have escaped and the other hens haven't hurt them. This is the first time we have done it this way so any advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks Annmarie

 

[my sunwolf]

Sometimes a momma hen will be aggressive enough to protect her chicks, but other times there are birds in the flock that are too aggressive and she will not be able to protect them. It really depends on your flock dynamics. If some of the chicks have already been exposed to the flock and the flock has not attacked them, I would say you could try putting the mom with the flock and supervise to see what happens. I usually just leave the moms in with the flock to raise their babies, but others will separate them out for the first few weeks until the babies are a little less fragile. Good luck!

 

[Ridgerunner]

You are dealing with living animals. No one can give you guarantees on how they will behave. We can tell you our experiences but others will have different experiences.

Hens have been hatching and raising chicks with the flock for thousands of years, ever since there were chickens. Sometimes bad things happen but the majority of the time bad things do not happen. Most broody hens will protect their chicks from the other hens. Most of the time the other hens don’t show that much interest in the chicks anyway. If a baby chick invades the private space of another hen, that hen may ignore it or it may peck it. That peck is not to kill it but to tell it to stay away from its social betters. The chick normally runs back to Mama. I’ve never seen it but some people I trust on this forum report they have had a hen aggressively seek out and attack a baby chick and the Mama does nothing to protect the chick. I believe them. With living animals anything is possible, but I’ve never seen that in all my years with broody hens raising chicks with the flock.

I have never seen a mature dominant rooster do anything close to threatening a chick. I have seen mature dominant roosters help Mama take care of the chicks. If the rooster sees the chicks at a young age he accepts them as his and part of his flock. If you wait until they are practically grown to introduce them he will likely see them as rivals or another rooster’s chicks. I really like to introduce the chicks to the flock early rather than later. Y9ours are still plenty young for this, besides they are visible to the flock.

One scene that I often see. A baby chick about two weeks old leaves Mama’s protection and goes to stand with the big girls around the feeder and starts eating with them. Sometimes this behavior is ignored but usually a hen will peck the chick to remind it that it is bad chicken etiquette for it to eat with its betters. The chick goes running back to Mama as fast as its little legs can take it, squawking and flapping its little wings. Mama ignores all this. That chick needs to learn a lesson. But on the few occasions a hen starts following the chick to follow up on the lesson, Mama politely whips butt. Nobody threatens her babies!

Some hens keep their chicks pretty close all the time. Others are more relaxed and let their babies roam quite a bit. While I prefer a broody to keep her chicks fairly close, it is not that unusual to see chicks scattered all over, intermingling with the other flock members without a problem.

There are risks. If a chick is left alone with other flock members and Mama cannot protect it, it is possible they will kill the chick. I once had a chick around a week and a half old get into a pen of 8 week old chicks where Mama could not protect the chick. They killed it. I had a place in my gate the chick could get through which I fixed. This is the kind of risk you are facing. You said your chicks are mixing with the flock but Mama is confined. So far nothing bad has happened and that is pretty much what I would expect, but I’d feel a lot better if Mama was out where she can protect them if she needs to.

The only other chick I’ve ever had killed by other chickens was when a two week old killed a sibling, a hatchmate. The broody hen ignored what was going on. That had nothing to do with the rest of the flock and could happen with yours if you keep them confined. With living animals you just don’t get guarantees, anything can happen.

My suggestion is to let the hen and chicks out to mingle with the flock. Mama will teach the others to leave her babies alone and will handle integration for you. At some point she will wean them and leave them on their own to handle pecking order issues for themselves when they mature enough. In the meantime they will probably form a separate flock of their own, avoiding the adults as much as they can. Because they are immature the adults outrank them in the pecking order and can be pretty mean in enforcing those pecking order rights if they invade their personal space. It normally doesn’t take long for chicks on their own to learn to avoid the rest of the flock, including Mama once she weans them.

Mama will probably take the chicks back to the space you have kept them in for the night so you can lock them up and keep them predator proof. She might at some point take them to the main coop or she might leave them where they are when she weans them. I’ve had hens do both. She might teach them to roost with the rest of the flock and she might not. Each chicken is an individual and each flock has its own dynamics, which change as the flock members change or mature. They are living animals, no one can tell you for sure what any of them will do.

Good luck!