sburt115
In the Brooder
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?
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?
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