Flock Separation Plan

[Bigox]

Hi ,

I'm looking for a bit of advice or just general thoughts about my plans for my flock. I am new to keeping Chickens, we were left - albeit not at our request - 6 adult chickens (5 hens + 1 rooster) by the previous owners of a house we bought, but as we let them go broody this has now turned into 6 adults & around 30-35 chicks.

I don't know how old the adults are , they are minimum 1 year (as they were adults when we first the house last August) , but I suspect they are much older than that. They survived all winter free ranging on just the occasional scraps while we were renovating the house. Although they are obviously able to still lay, I don't know how much longer that will persist, so I'd rather replace them - they are also somewhat feral.

We don't know how many chicks will survive yet (range from 1 week to 6 weeks old), but probably more than we want/need, so we'll give away the extras.

My plan is as follows - we've built a new secure coop, and It'd be nice to keep probably 5 of the pullets as our new flock, probably cooped up. I'd then leave the original 6 free ranging as they did before (there's nearly 2 acres here, including some natural forest) - while I'd collect any eggs I could find and probably leave some feed lying around, the idea would be to let them live pretty much wild and let nature take its course. However, I'd also want the new chickens to occasionally free range as their run isn't huge.

Do you foresee problems when I let the 'new' flock out to free range in them fighting with the old flock, or issues keeping them separate?

Thanks in advance,
Matthew

 

[sumi]

They will hang out together and mingle and the completely free ranging flock, will they be sleeping outside as well? This may encourage the cooped up pullets to do the same. It will be better to keep one group of chickens and train them to use the coop for egg laying and to roost there with daily free range time. You can try to teach the older, feral chickens to stay in the coop by putting them in there and leaving them in there for a week before letting them free range a bit, but after being out and about for so long I honestly don't know if they will accept the new arrangement. It is worth a try though.

 

[chfite]

Birds of a feather flock together. I suspect that whatever they do, they all will do it. Focus on getting them to roost in the coop by penning them up in there for a couple of weeks. Otherwise, they all may hang out outside the coop.

Chris