Ok so i put my 2 silkies and 2 orps in witht he big girls 3weeks ago due to very hot weather here , they are now 8 weeks old and have been living together in harmony bit of just remember who the boss is but apart fromm that nothing bad at all and the wee babies have become real adventerous , No w today i added two frizzle chicks same age as the babies and to be honest the older hens have accepted them better then the others they have been in the coop under close watch all day i noticed the baby chicks kept pecking now and again more so when the new ones wanted to huddle in with them , i dont think anything major ! i just went out and checked and noticed them all huddled quietly together in a corner ,my question is this a good thing or would you recomend me bringing the new ones inside should i just let them sort it out between them older hens couldnt care less i will keep checking but i got patio dorrs wide open and cant hear a peep so i figure they are asleep ,please help to put my mind at rest its so sad seeing the new babies trying to fit in makes me want to just go and cuddle them up !
The only thing I would worry about is the huddling together may suffocate the little ones.The younger will go to the middle where its the warmest. Do they have roost? Other then that they should be fine if the bigger ones arent pecking at them. I usually put a box or something leaned agaist the wall so the young chicks can duck behind to get away from the mean bigger ones.
Babie like to huddle rather then roost. They will adjust at that age to not suffocate. Mine loved to huddle until around 9 or 10 weeks old. I worried my Silkies would get crushed or suffocated by those great big Lavender Orpingtons - but they didn't. Everyone would shift and make room for each other. If they were much younger and you had a huge batch of them I would say put something in the corners to block them from pushing someone into the corner and piling on them. But at that age they will do fine on their own moving when they feel too many on top. They're so cute when they huddle. Get some sleep - soon they will want to roost and their cute baby stage will pass into the wild teenage time
Thanks everyone got up this morning and they all fine huddling in the nesting box lol it was funny as they we're next 3 eggs that the big girls had just layed and another hen frantically running round looking for somewhere to lay her egg lol she eventually kicked the babies out ha ha ha but they all seem fine the babies are Squabling a bit with each other but nothing serious j don't think ,they have heaps of high and low perches and the coop is huge so they no where near the big girls at night anyway .
