Can I bring new chicks in with older chicks?

[kids&chicks]

We have 7 Barred Rock girls and they are approx 10-12 weeks old. Can we bring other chicks into the "house?"

 

[CarriBrown]

How old are these new chicks?

 

[Pupsnpullets]

Good question. I have 9 12 week olds and 4 at 1 month. Been wondering, due to lack of space, can they be put in together.

 

[love-my-wolves]

I have read as long as they are about the same size. If there is a big size difference, the bigger ones may pick on the little ones. So age doesn't matter, size does.

Steph

 

[kids&chicks]

Quote:
Well we were looking at little ones again,, like 2-3 weeks old, so considerably younger and smaller than our girls now.

I don't want any of the hens or chicks to get stressed out so maybe we will try to locate some chicks that are similiar in size to ours (Thanks Steph!). Pecking order......

 

[CocoTeal]

I would assume that your older chickens may actually hurt the baby chicks! eee... I'm having to think about this same dilemma; we want to get some new babies to add to our 7 hens who will be two years old this May.

I'm thinking that if we do go ahead and add new birds, we will keep them separated until they are adolescents and then try and incorporate them into living in the same coop, all the while housing them close together, but fenced off from each other so that they will be used to each other...

Thoughts on my plan?

We have a unique situation, we have almost five acres of land, we have a groomed back yard area that is fenced off with chain-link, our chicken run is about 70 feet, by 10 feet and runs the length of our chain-link on the outside of it. So my plan was to put the baby chicks next to their coop, but on the opposite (manicured) side of it.

Thanks for your thoughts/suggestions!

peck, peck,
Kaara

 

[Den in Penn]

Sounds like a good plan, Kaara.

 

[Fierlin1182]

Putting them together might result in a bit of picking at first, but eventually it settles down when the chicks have grown to their full size, or sometimes even before that if the older ones have time to get used to their new companions. I found that eventually they just stopped bothering. The chicks got chased away from the feeder, but they always came back later for their fill once the big girls were finished.

CocoTeal, good plan. We put the younger chickens into the coop just for the day at first, so they wouldn't be threatened all the time, and only after they'd been introduced to the others for a while did we move them into the coop at nights.