Coop training new chicks with older ones

[Connor94]

Hi!
We're recently new to raising/keeping chickens. We have 2 x 12 week old girls who live happily in their coop/run outside. We also have 2 x 6 week old girls who, until now, have been happily living in their brooder indoors. Over the past week or so we have slowly been introducing and allowing them all to spend time together to get to used to each other before we move our babies outside permanently. When we moved our older girls outside, we coop trained them and have had no issues. What I need advice on is how to do the same with our little ones without disrupting the routine? Our older girls often go back into their coop throughout the hottest part of the day as it's located in the coolest part of the yard (we're hitting mid 30s here at the moment). For this reason, I can't lock the babies in the coop for a week to get them used to roosting/sleeping/knowing that is their home. We tried to get them to sleep outside in the coop for the first time tonight and it just ended in a complete chicken meltdown. Please help??

 

[Judy]

They will sort things out in their own time. I don't know that you can rush this. It would be best if they all lived next to each other for a while, perhaps a month, with a fence between. I've never "coop trained" any chickens. They always went in at dusk to roost, even when they were truly free range, meaning they could have walked to the next county if they wanted to. They knew the coop was home because that's wehere the food and water were. I've also seen chickens who were added to a flock take 6 months or a year to stay with the flock at all times, moving about as one flock. Til then, they might roost in a different spot in the coop, and hang around in a different area during the day.

This thread is a good discussion of the topic. I hope something in it will help you:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/803815/integrating-two-groups/0_20