Earliest Age to Integrade?

[sotelomary]

l'abeille...How did you feed your chicks when you integrated them at 10 weeks? Did you use flock raiser for all of your flock? or did you still give crumbles to the chicks and layer to the hens?

Thanks for your encouraging advise. It is different when we only have a tiny coop in a small city lot.

Mary

 

[l'abeille]

Chicks get chick starter/grower in their refuge areas. Hens get layer pellets from a hanging feeder placed too high for chicks to reach.

I also had a 10 week cockerel that was SO mean to the chicks I had to remove him to integrate. He is in a solo cage now, soon to go in the freezer.

 

[l'abeille]

Oh, I see now you were asking what to do when I took down the refuges. Well then I just let the hens have access to the chick food and didn't worry about it. They ate a bunch at first then stopped eating it after it lost its novelty. It won't hurt them as along as they have access to their own layer pellets and free choice oyster shell. I make sure to keep the layer pellets out of reach of the chicks, though, and the oyster shell too.

 

[Whisper]

I'm trying to integrate my 8 week old chicks, out of sheer necessity. We've been letting the adults and adolescents free range in the back yard at the same time for a couple weeks. Mostly they've avoided each other. There were a few pulled feathers and pecks. Nobody's gotten killed so far.

Right now, I have the chicks staying inside a Dogloo out in the chicken run. They have free range of the run and the adult chickens are locked in the coop where they can see and interact with them through the wire. (It's a Southern coop, all wire on the front to let in the breeze) This afternoon, we let all of them out in the run together and left the coop door open. The adolescents explored inside the coop and the adults had their "gobble the grass and all possible bugs" time. We fed them in two separate areas, because the adults would not share with the adolescents.

I am hoping that another week or two will find us able to move all of them into the coop together. I am, however, going to completely replace all the roosts when I do! That way the adults will be just as disoriented as the kiddoes.

 

[Whisper]

I forgot to add, also we have a couple bantam hens, which the babies are the same size as or bigger, so I don't think the adults see the size difference as important as the behavior. As long as the chicks are subordinate, the hens seem content to leave them be so far.

 

[sotelomary]

l'abeille :

Oh, I see now you were asking what to do when I took down the refuges. Well then I just let the hens have access to the chick food and didn't worry about it. They ate a bunch at first then stopped eating it after it lost its novelty. It won't hurt them as along as they have access to their own layer pellets and free choice oyster shell. I make sure to keep the layer pellets out of reach of the chicks, though, and the oyster shell too.

I was afraid that the chickens would eat the chick's crumbles since they prefer crumbles to pellets. I was concerned that their egg shells would be soft if the chickens don't eat their layer pellets. But I'm glad that the chickens did not continue to just eat the crumbles. Yes, the layer and oyster shell will be high so that the chicks can't reach it. It was the chickens I was worried about.

Thanks
Mary​

 

[gryeyes]

I didn't put mine outside until it was time to change to grower/all purpose feed. The ducks who went out at the same time also get that feed, in the run. The layers have layer feed in their coop. However, they do eat the grower feed and ONE hen had soft eggs two days in a row. I immediately put out oyster shell (in the coop) and scattered some when the ducks were swimming in their pool.

The layers are still eating both foods; the layer food is going down more slowly and the grower food is being consumed more rapidly. I just keep oyster shell available in the coop and occasionally toss some for the hens when the ducks and the adolescents aren't around the layers. Haven't had a problem with soft eggs since.

 

[tommboy1973]

Whisper, love your signature!!! I laugh my arse off every time I see it!!

 

[Whisper]

Heh, thanks