Chickens and Ducks are Quaking me up!!!

[shoehorny]

Howdy everyone!

I wonder if can get some good recommendations here. I have 6 beautiful Rhode Island Red chickens and one complacent rooster. All of the chickens in the flock are going on their 4th year (but still producing lots of eggs!). Last year I bought 12 baby leghorn chicks and I raised them in a separate pen until they outgrew the pen. I then introduced all of them to the coop. This has been my standard procedure for years and I never had any problems. However, when I returned the next day I found that 6 of the young chickens perished and their corpses were scattered about, uneaten, but dead. I gathered the remaining 6 young chickens and put them back in the pen. I had a mink sneak into the coop one year, several years ago, and something similar happened so I fortified the coop. I did find one small hole in the coop wall that I immediately patched up. The next day, I let the other 6 young chickens back out and watched them for a while. They all clumped together in the run area, but they seemed ok. The next day 5 more of the young chickens were dead. The one remaining young chicken went back into the pen for another week. When I let the last remaining young chicken out into the coop, I noticed one of the reds chased her around a bit, but left off when the young chicken hid under a nesting table. A few days later this last young chicken died too!

I looked on BYC.com and learned that this is a common behavior with chickens attacking and killing young chickens. It had just never happened to me before. The information I read mentioned that the chicken needs to be as big or bigger than the older chickens to prevent this. This goes for ducks mixed in with chickens too. This Spring I bought two ducks and kept them in their pen two months. They are now at least as big as the chickens. However, when I let the ducks loose in the coop, one of the chickens immediately attacked a duck! I picked up the chicken and put it in the run. As I was doing so, another chicken attacked a duck. I moved all of the chickens into the run and locked them in for the night.

My question is: How do I prevent the chickens from harming the ducks?

Thanks!

 

[casportpony]

Sorry on one replied to your thread. Can you post some pictures of you set-up?

 

[Peppercorngal]

In my experience you have it backwards. The smaller the chick, the lower the threat to the other chickens. Little chicks are mostly ignored, they are no threat to the food, no threat in the pecking order or space available. When you wait to integrate when they are full grown, then they ARE a threat to the food supply, to the space, and they don't fit in to the pecking order. I always integrate my new babies at two weeks old. I raise them in a wooden brooder and then I open the doors and place a grid wire that the babies can enter and leave through, but the large chickens can't get through. I mostly don't want the hens in the brooder to eat the babies food! After a week I just take the wire out and let them be together. I have no idea how to fix your problem at this point, just make a note for future chicks! I wish you only the best of luck! Here's a photo of the babies with the flock at a young age.