For those who have chickens & cont. to buy chicks.

[Watermelon_Gypsy]

What I'm curious about is for those who have older chickens & then buy new chicks or even adopt/rescue an older chicken. Are you guys introducing them to your current flock & if so how - or are they kept alone?

 

[mnisue]

I started with an original flock of 7, mixed from australorpes and rhodies. I have since adopted a fully grown leg horn and ameraucana. The first was the leg horn and after quarantining her for a few weeks in our very large dog kennel I attempted to introduce her. Not pretty! We just let her free range it after that until an ameraucana strolled into our yard. After no response to signs and no sign of her finding her own way home we decided to try placing both into the flock at the same time. While it was rough on them, they shared the "attention" and eventually both have found their place in the pecking order (the tiny little leg horn ended up on top).

I'm looking at replacing, and gradually removing, the original 7 this fall and am currently wondering how it will work to introduce pullets to the flock. Any advice?

 

[austinandkara]

We had a flock of our rooster, 2 hens, and 7 of their chicks. We got a new hen off of BYC actually. We are lucky that our chicken coop is divided into 2 sections so it is basically like having 2 coops. We would let the regular flock free range as usual and we kept her in the coop for about a week and the others would come by and look at her. The rooster took to her right away and the other hens seemed to be indifferent. Once I thought they were used to each other, I let the new hen out to free range with the others. Our more dominant hen sparred with her a bit but once pecking order was established, everything was calm. The new hen kept to herself for several days but now she is completely part of the flock.