We are looking for some advice or ideas for successfully combining our two groups of chickens together into one coop with as little trouble as possible. We've tried a few different things before we've come up with the arrangement we currently have but we aren't sure about completing this last step. Any advice/tips are welcome! Starting at the beginning at attempt 1 of this process we had an original group of 6 chickens (3 hens and 3 roosters) who were in the main coop together. We didn't realize the 2 roosters were roosters until this first incident happened but they are gone now. When our 10 new hens were ready to go outside we put them all in the coop at night (again not realizing there were 3 roosters). We awoke the next morning to an angry group of chickens and after a day together we had to separate again because primarily our rooster (that we kept) was blooding many of the new hens with help from the other 2. Our second group of hens were about 11 weeks old at that point. After not wanting our little babies hurt any worse we put them back in the garage for a few days while my husband build an a frame coop to put next to the 4 originals coop ( at that point 3 hens and only 1 rooster). We've had them side by side for 3 weeks and two days ago we moved the rooster into the a frame and put the 10 hens with our original 3. The process isn't as bad as it was with the roosters the first time we did it but the hens are still rather aggressive towards the new ones which is understandable and not anything that we feel we need to intervene with just natural pecking order things were seeing. Our rooster who is in the a frame coop next to the chickens is still showing aggressive behavior by clawing the ground and almost does a dance when we sees the new ones in the other coop and crows and makes all sorts of noises while communicating with the other 3 originals. So after reading the above how should we introduce the rooster back to our 13 chickens.. How long should we wait before reintroducing our roaster back into the coop? What should we expect?
First I would suggest looking through some of the posts because there are some great advices on here but with that said, I have only seen that kind of resistance if the younger chickens were not quite mature enough. They may have needed to get bigger. I have always practiced getting the new hens close to the same size as the existing hens before introducing. Several months ago we had introduced 8 or 9 new chickens, 2 of which are now getting butchered as young roosters, but there was on hen that had been getting picked on. We took her out and put her in the grow up pen. We added 13 new adult hens last night and also put the one from the grow up pen in ( she had to heal first ) The situation with the rooster is probably that he can't get the hens to come to him or get them to go to bed at night. They are very demanding, lol. We actually pulled an old rooster last night and put an new adult rooster in the pen with the hens. I have had very aggressive roosters in the past that just didn't make the cake. It is partially the reason for the replacement rooster last night. All are doing well today and the hens started laying by midday. Our grow up pen is out of sight of the main chicken pen. I wish you luck, but seriously, there are some great experts on here that can probably offer additional info. (maybe put up something where they can't see each other until you are ready to reintroduce.)
I say put them all together and walk away....He knows them...He wants in with the ladies. Might be some fighting but Chickens can handle other Chickens... Cheers
Here are some links on integration that you may find useful. If you read through them, and then develop a strategy that suits you, hopefully things will be fine. https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/adding-to-your-flock https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1015820/reintegration-by-supervised-visits#post_15742910 https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/adding-to-your-flock https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1126547/topic-of-the-week-integrating-chicks-into-an-adult-flock https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1069595/introducing-chicks-to-adults#post_16276224 https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/introducing-new-chickens-using-the-see-but-don-t-touch-method https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1098683/introducing-new-chickens-to-old-flock#post_16895615 Good luck CT
How old is your 'rooster'? Also...do you birds free range? How big are the coops and runs in feet by feet?
