birdlover2
Crowing
We got some new Bantam grow-out chicks (for a multitude of reasons I suppose), but having trouble with the flock accepting them. There's only three of them, 2 hens and one rooster. Thinking it was a mistake to get the roo, as it's making this process harder, but they wouldn't sell me the one hen unless I took the rooster. They're doing just fine as their own tiny flock, and they'll be able to live mainly in the basement in their bin under a heat lamp for a while yet, so it's not exactly urgent, but we tried to introduce them for the first time today and it was an utter failure.
We introduced our last batch of new chickens (6 Bantams from the same seller) pretty quickly by putting them all in the coop with the original six after they seemed to get along reasonably well with some individual members of the flock. Our roos chased them around because they wanted to mate with them and still haven't figured out that they need to romance the hen to get her to lie down so they can mate, but the hens flew up onto the perches and weren't bothered up there. Then, when the original flock members got tired of eating and drinking down below and decided to perch, they were able to fly down and eat and drink and do whatever else for a while, so they took turns like that for a couple weeks but now are completely integrated, with them all perching and eating and drinking together, and the roos have stopped targeting the new hens and chasing them around to the point they can't do anything. They've been accepted into the flock. But this time is wildly different.
First of all, these seem younger than the last batch and haven't quite figured out how to fly up onto something and perch yet. Their young age also makes them much more fragile. Second, before there was an equal (or almost equal, I can't remember when my mother lost her one rooster), number of new and old chickens, now there is 9 old chickens and 3 new ones, no-where near equal. Third problem, there is a rooster this time. One of our three roos seems alright with him, or at least like he doesn't want to kill him, but the other two would probably spurr him to death judging by what they did when they saw him through the chicken wire. Fourth, they're too small for our roos to mate with without getting injured, and as mentioned above too young (or inexperianced) to really get away properly. Fifth, our hens, especially our Sebright hen, is jealous of the hens and has attacked them. Our Sebright went straight for their eyes! She definately doesn't want to share the attention of the roosters with even more hens. Thankfully, their little roo was in the pen with them and fought back. She didn't turn tail like the others when he defended his two hens though, she kept right on fighting him. I had to break it up by grabbing her out of the Peck and Play pen.
So yeah, those are our issues with introducing these three new members of the flock. Any ideas on how we could do better at it in the future? Any tips for introducing new chickens would be helpful. BTW the breed of the hen-rooster pair is Black Cochin Bantam, and the other hen is a barnyard mix.
We introduced our last batch of new chickens (6 Bantams from the same seller) pretty quickly by putting them all in the coop with the original six after they seemed to get along reasonably well with some individual members of the flock. Our roos chased them around because they wanted to mate with them and still haven't figured out that they need to romance the hen to get her to lie down so they can mate, but the hens flew up onto the perches and weren't bothered up there. Then, when the original flock members got tired of eating and drinking down below and decided to perch, they were able to fly down and eat and drink and do whatever else for a while, so they took turns like that for a couple weeks but now are completely integrated, with them all perching and eating and drinking together, and the roos have stopped targeting the new hens and chasing them around to the point they can't do anything. They've been accepted into the flock. But this time is wildly different.
First of all, these seem younger than the last batch and haven't quite figured out how to fly up onto something and perch yet. Their young age also makes them much more fragile. Second, before there was an equal (or almost equal, I can't remember when my mother lost her one rooster), number of new and old chickens, now there is 9 old chickens and 3 new ones, no-where near equal. Third problem, there is a rooster this time. One of our three roos seems alright with him, or at least like he doesn't want to kill him, but the other two would probably spurr him to death judging by what they did when they saw him through the chicken wire. Fourth, they're too small for our roos to mate with without getting injured, and as mentioned above too young (or inexperianced) to really get away properly. Fifth, our hens, especially our Sebright hen, is jealous of the hens and has attacked them. Our Sebright went straight for their eyes! She definately doesn't want to share the attention of the roosters with even more hens. Thankfully, their little roo was in the pen with them and fought back. She didn't turn tail like the others when he defended his two hens though, she kept right on fighting him. I had to break it up by grabbing her out of the Peck and Play pen.
So yeah, those are our issues with introducing these three new members of the flock. Any ideas on how we could do better at it in the future? Any tips for introducing new chickens would be helpful. BTW the breed of the hen-rooster pair is Black Cochin Bantam, and the other hen is a barnyard mix.
