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N F C said:
I'd think twice about using a heat lamp for your older girls. Heat lamps in coops always scare me...I've heard too many stories about coop fires and losing entire flocks that way. Your older girls shouldn't need supplemental heat by 2 months of age.
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X2. Just today I set my heat lamp on my chicks cage and an hour later I found our bunny supply bucket on top of it with some leashes getting extremely hot. The whole shed would take 5 minutes to set on fire and then it would head to the house next.... I can't even imagine.
 
I have 2 laying hens that are 26 weeks & a couple 8.5 week old hens. I have been keeping the young ones seperate from the older ones & taking them outside daily (if not too cold) & letting them meet with kennel fence between them so they get used to each other & switch them sides from time to time so the little ones can check out the coop.

I would not recommend letting the little ones have direct contact with the bigger chickens. They will most likely get pecked & kicked (Ariel style - very scary). The advice I got on here was to wait until they are about the same size before they are truly face to face.

For now, they get little pecks through kennel fence if they are brave enough to stand close. One of my little ones is way too brave & she stands as tall as she can & never backs down from "the stare" while the other always runs away when the big girls get close.

I am hoping by the time they are the same size that a transition goes smoothly, but I have a broody hen, so I am not sure at this point & my back up plan is to have a separate coop/kennel area until things are very obviously safe for all of them.

Best of luck.
 
chicken4prez said:
X2. Just today I set my heat lamp on my chicks cage and an hour later I found our bunny supply bucket on top of it with some leashes getting extremely hot. The whole shed would take 5 minutes to set on fire and then it would head to the house next.... I can't even imagine.
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Glad everything turned out ok :)
 
chicken4prez said:
Welcome to BYC! It looks like everyone has got you started. Make yourself comfortable!
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Thank you, it took a little bit for me to figure out how to make a thread but I found a video on your site and FINALLY understood it! I've been wanting to ask this question for a while, and I'm glad I did!
 
ChickenGirl555 said:
that's smart, but it's also kinda cold in Wisconsin if you've never been here in fall/winter, and I really don't want them to freeze!
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Well I'm in Canada so I know exactly what you're feeling, if not worse. What I've done before is create a little enclosure inside the coop with netting so the chickens can get to know each other that way too.
 

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