Broody isa adopting chicks

[Lizzy733]

She does everything she should but defend them. She's at bottom of pecking order. They have been blocked off from the others for a week.

Yeah, wait till they're old enough to stand a bit on their own. Pecking order behavior in chicks starts around 5-6 weeks. The bigger they are, the better.

When integration time comes, spice up the run with some new perches and activities to keep the big girls distracted. Have ways the chicks can break line of sight without getting cornered. Add multiple feed and water stations so they can't be blocked from eating/drinking.

If you have 'one bad hen', she can be isolated instead of the broody and mother, to allow them to integrate with the rest of the flock.

Mind perch time - especially when the babies start getting interested in perching. This always caused me the most problems, where the big girls would kick them off the perches.

 

[DaisyG2317]

If you have 'one bad hen', she can be isolated instead of the broody and mother, to allow them to integrate with the rest of the flock.

I was contemplating removing the bad one instead.

Mama and babies have been inside coop in a hardware cloth enclosure and the other 2 hens don't seem to give a rip about them. This bully one though was also seen ripping apart another chick the mama had. So she is a problem.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I was contemplating removing the bad one instead.

Mama and babies have been inside coop in a hardware cloth enclosure and the other 2 hens don't seem to give a rip about them. This bully one though was also seen ripping apart another chick the mama had. So she is a problem.

You can try. My flock, goals, and set-up are a lot different from yours, I raise mine to eat for instance and have more chickens. I try to solve for the peace of the flock, not for any one individual chicken. If I had a hen attacking chicks like that she would be in the freezer pretty quickly. As you have noticed the other hens aren't like that. As far as I'm concerned there are too many good hens out there to put up with a bad one that's killing chicks.

You can try isolating that aggressive hen and see if the others can get along. After a week or more of isolation you can try again and see what happens. Sometimes isolation can change behaviors.

 

[DaisyG2317]

You can try. My flock, goals, and set-up are a lot different from yours, I raise mine to eat for instance and have more chickens. I try to solve for the peace of the flock, not for any one individual chicken. If I had a hen attacking chicks like that she would be in the freezer pretty quickly. As you have noticed the other hens aren't like that. As far as I'm concerned there are too many good hens out there to put up with a bad one that's killing chicks.

You can try isolating that aggressive hen and see if the others can get along. After a week or more of isolation you can try again and see what happens. Sometimes isolation can change behaviors.

We ended up just moving broody and babies to prefab and will have to deal with integrating when they are bigger. I didn't want to deal with that but such is life, I suppose. Now i have to figure out what's wrong with baby chick