Chicken Farming not going well....

Hi I'm a newbie with chickens, and I haven't had very good luck so far (I'll try to keep it short!). I raised four chicks from 3-4 weeks old to 10-11 weeks, then finally had to accept that three of them were roosters (they started fighting constantly)! I tried to find homes for two of the roosters, no luck. I called vets, they wanted $50 to put down each chicken. I finally called my neighbor, who was happy to butcher them for meat . All I had left was Big Bird and my runty little pullet Jackie O. (Big Bird crowed for the first time this morning, we'll see what the next-door neighbor says about that). I picked up 2 Wyandottes that were just about laying age. I kept them in a separate area for about a day and things seemed to be going okay, after a couple of squabbles, so I tried putting them together this morning (I know, bad, bad). After about 10 minutes the new hens decided they owned the coop and started chasing Big Bird and Jackie O. Right now I am thoroughly discouraged, Jackie and BB are very depressed and won't leave the coop at all. The hens are penned up in a 4x4 area and not happy about that.

Should I call the previous owner of the hens and ask if she'll take them back, and give it a rest, or should I cordon off the day run so the new hens will have more room and stuff them back in the corner of the coop at night? I'm assuming that they will need to be separated for quite a while now, or will they never integrate due to the age and size difference? (3 mos. vs. 6 mos??) I just wanted to have a small flock of laying hens!

 

Thanks for the encouragement. I was really happy to see Big bird and Jackie O come out of the coop this afternoon and start scratching and laying down right next to the screened off hens. I do think they are lonely and want to make new friends when the hens are ready. I will take it slow and give the hens a larger area to run around in for a few days. I've read about the quarantine issue but I honestly don't have anywhere else to put them (I'd have to build another predator proof coop), and her birds looked great so I took the chance. Next year maybe I'll build a bigger coop! If I still have chickens

 

Thanks again for any info. I have been very busy this weekend building a new secure mini-coop for the 2 hens. I have them in a 8 x 8 day run area, next to the others in the "playhouse" style coop/run. I also put roosts in for them and they loooove the roosts. Everyone seems to be settled down happily at the moment and I'm going to leave them that way for a few days. I'm a bit concerned about the one hen constantly picking on her sister (SLW and GLW), she seems to be a bit of a bully, could that just be adjustment issues? She pulls feathers out of the GLWs rear sometimes. My other chickens did (do) a lot of posing and chasing, but no actual feather pulling.