Combining 6 wk chicks with 10-12 wk chicks?

[Black Forest Cake]

First post here--hello! We are newbies at this and need to know if it would be safe to combine our six-week old chicks which have been living in our basement, with a small group of pullets/chicks/whatever which came with the coop we recently bought. The latest acquisitions are about 10-14 weeks old, so they are bigger than our current set. I thought of putting them all outside in the yard today and keeping an eye on them...any advice for this novice?

 

[Wisher1000]

How many of each do you have? It goes a bit more smoothly if there are way more of the smaller ones. If you are going to eventually house all of them together, you have to start some where. When you put them out in the open together, the little ones may get run around and if they panic, they will scatter and hide, and they can hide really well!. I like to provide a "safe chick zone" where they can get away from the larger birds but everybody can see and get used to seeing each other. I use a wire box (2x4 welded wire with some of the spaces widened to make it easier to squeeze through) that I made out of some scrap fencing. I put it in the corner of the coop with food and water inside so the little ones can run there to be safe but can come out and mingle with the others. Expect for the little ones to suffer some pecks to the head and back, it's going to happen. Once the order is worked out it will slack off alot. Once you put them together, the longer they can stay together the better. I will try to get a pic up soon...

Here's a pic of my chick safe house. Sorry about the blur but this was the only pic I have with both aged chicks in the same shot. This has worked well for me.

 

[smcjoj3]

I am interested to see what others have to say regarding this matter too. I just combined 2 different aged chicks this morning, and the 'littles' seem like they are picking on the bigger ones? One of the younger chicks keeps pecking at the older ones eyes. The older chicks are looking at me like I have betrayed them & they are off hiding in the corner while the newbie smaller ones bounce around the pen eating and drinking merrily ( there are a equal number of older & younger chicks) ..... I totally would have thought the older ones would have acted more dominant and territorial over the food & whatnot. But no, my lovely ladies are all huddled off in the corner like it is the end of days

I suspect everyone will come around with in the next few days though.

 

[Black Forest Cake]

Thank you for your replies! We have six of the younger chicks, and seven of the older ones.

 

[Wisher1000]

Well? What did you do? How did it go? Update. please!

 

[Black Forest Cake]

They seem to be doing okay so far. The boss pullet of the older group was pecking at the smaller ones a bit when we let them out into the run last night, but so far we haven't seen any evidence of WWIII! They don't hang out together, but I imagine that will come in time.