Hen killed 2 month old chick in coop

[tiffanymanley]

So I have one adult hen and three 2 month old pullets, a cochin, a sexlink and a barred rock. Their runs have been separated by chicken wire for about a week and they have two separate coops. Yesterday I removed the chicken wire and everyone seemed fine. The chicks were a bit spooked by the adult hen, but she didn't seem bothered by them at all. When I went to put them to bed for the night two of the pullets went back into their baby coop. The baby cochin went into the other coop with the adult hen. When I locked them up for the night they were resting peacefully, all seemed well.
I came out this morning around 9am to open the coop and saw my baby cochin, bloody and beaten, her head was pecked horribly. I knew I had to finish her, it was way beyond mending. It was horrible.
Now I am unsure what to do about integrating my flock. They are all out in the run together now, nobody seems upset. I am afraid to put them all in a coop together now. I was thinking perhaps make sure my run is very secure and just leaving the coop door open at night for a while in case the hen starts pecking the babies can escape outside. The tempatures where I am at are warm at night, in the 50's.
I feel just horrible leaving that baby alone in their last night with no where to escape.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[song of joy]

I'm so sorry about what happened. I think it's best to integrate chicks with adult birds when the chicks are close to the same size. I usually do this around 13 to 16 weeks of age. I suspect the baby cochin may have made distress peeps looking for its flock mates, and perhaps this contributed to the adult attacking it, although the size difference may have been enough of a factor.

You may want to wait another month or two to do the integration. When you do integrate them, put lots of hiding places and obstacles in the coop so the pullets can easily get out of the hen's way. Some people use boards or pallets leaned against the inside walls of the coops and run (to create a tunnel with two open ends), and boards or pallets elevated about 6-10 inches off the floor/ground to let pullets in but keep the hens out. During this process, I agree that it may be helpful to keep access to the run open.

If you free range your birds, integration is sometimes a bit easier as they have more room to work with. I let my pullets get used to free ranging for a few days while keeping the hens confined. Then I let them both out together to free range. There will be some chasing of the pullets, but they are usually faster and have lots of room to forage away from the hens. Over a period of a few weeks, the hens come to tolerate the "intruders".

Best of luck to you. Integration is always stressful for the flock and flock owner.

 

[CoopedUpChicken]

Awww, so sorry. The strange thing I noticed with my birds is that I had to separate them pretty quickly into 2 different brooders when some of the birds grew a lot quicker than others despite being the same age. When I integrated them back together they were 5 weeks old and even now, the birds stick together to their own "brooder" groups. The smaller group birds quickly became the "lower" birds in the hen peck order. Luckily, they are all the same age (or within a few days apart) and still babies, so there was no bloody battles.

 

[esme13]

Sorry for your loss, I would wait 12-16 weeks until they look a similar size to your hen. For now socialize them under your watch.