Hi. Just bought 5 new chickens(8months old) to add to my flock, any preventative meds I should give

[Redlandchicks]

Hi i just purchase 5 new hens to add to my flock..aside from DE(which i mixed with thair food as a wormer) is there anything else i can give them to make sure they dont have anything that could spread to my current hens//? Any help would be great...they have been in a seperate coop for a week now, no signs of sickness..they came from a clean home....just asking on a preventative note.. thanks so much..
maybe a preventative for cocci...idk Thanks

 

[lazy gardener]

The recommendation is to quarantine them for a month. Depending on your level of prevention, you might want to dust them for mites... Then, I'd add a girl or two from my existing flock to the newbies for an other week, if there's room. Call it your sacrificial bird. This will allow the newbies to bond with a member of your flock, and if any of your flock is going to get sick from the new birds who may be carrying a latent infection, it will show up there, instead of hitting your whole flock. This would by my ideal, but a lot depends on your set up.

 

[Redlandchicks]

ok great, yes my current flock is free range, so their loose all the time, their actually more like dogs and come when you call lol...the new 5 girls are more timid so ive been working with them everyday to be more social, they are in a huge coop like 15ftx15ft..its large enough for 30+..ill keep them in for 3 more week, then add the 1 current hen as you recommend.... like i mentioned they came from a clean home and no signs of any sickness but i rather be safe than sorry..and that way the new girls know that coop is their home...I did add D.Earth to their feed for a couple days, should i continue for the remaining 3 wks..and if i give them a preventative dose of something for cocci, can i still collect and eat the eggs? Thanks so much sorry for all the questions..

 

[aart]

DE will not work on internal parasites, it doesn't work when wet, but it will kill some bugs if they are in the dry food.

I would add more than one hen to the newbies, one bird integration is asking for trouble.

IMO treating for cocci is unnecessary.



There's some good links about medical quarantine in my notes below:


Here's some notes I've taken on integration that I found to be very helpful.
See if any of them, or the links provided, might offer some tips that will assist you in your situation:

Integration of new chickens to flock.

Consider medical quarantine:
BYC Medical Quarantine Article
Poultry Biosecurity
BYC 'medical quarantine' search

Confine new birds within sight but physically segregated from older/existing birds for several weeks, so they can see and get used to each other but not physically interact. Integrating new birds of equal size works best.

For smaller chicks I used a large wire dog crate right in the coop for the smallers. I removed the crate door and put up a piece of wire fencing over the opening and bent up one corner just enough for the smallers to fit thru but the biggers could not. Feed and water inside the crate for the smallers. Make sure the smallers know how to get in and out of the crate opening before exposing them to the olders. this worked out great for me, by the time the crate was too small for the them to roost in there(about 3 weeks), they had pretty much integrated themselves to the olders.

If you have too many smallers to fit in a crate you can partition off part of the coop with a wire wall and make the same openings for smallers escape.


The more space, the better. Birds will peck to establish dominance, the pecked bird needs space to get away. As long as there's no blood drawn and/or new bird is not trapped/pinned down, let them work it out. Every time you interfere or remove new birds, they'll have to start the pecking order thing all over again.

Multiple feed/water stations. Dominance issues are most often carried out over sustenance, more stations lessens the frequency of that issue.

Places for the new birds to hide out of line of sight and/or up and away from any bully birds.

Read up on integration..... BYC advanced search>titles only>integration
This is good place to start reading:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/adding-to-your-flock