Chicken Mom

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Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.

I start to integrate motherless chicks into my flock at 4 weeks of age. The chicks are brooded in the coop in a maternity ward with small sized doors that only the chicks can go through. At 4 weeks of age the small doors are opened so that they can wander out into the coop and check things out at will. If they get chased or get nervous they can run back into the maternity ward where the large chickens cannot enter. By the time they are 7 weeks old, they're not going back into the ward anymore and are staying with the big chickens.

As for feeding, since the very first day on my farm, all birds have been fed a starter grower crumble, Flock Raiser, meat bird mash or whatever combination of the above that I need to get to 20% protein. I keep two containers of oyster shell for free choice feeding by the active layers. Feeding this way allows you to have chicks, pullets, broody hens, old hens taking winter breaks, roosters and cockerels in your flock at any and all times of the year with no need to make any changes to what they're eating.
 
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Hiya, and welcome to BYC! :frow

A few years ago we switched to Kalmbach's Flock Maker crumbles which is an "all-flock" 20% protein, good for our baby chicks, baby ducks, adult chickens, and adult ducks. Much simpler!

With silkies, generally, we don't integrate very successfully until they are around 4 months old (same size). We have chicks in pens with adults right now, and the roosters are all nice to them, but those hens are ruthless sometimes! As long as the pens are big and they can run away or hide behind something to ditch the witch, they're fine.
 

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