Impossible intergration?

[JonB]

Can chickens just not be feasible to intergrate at times? We have one pen with 2 birds, BR and SLW and another with 3 birds, RR and 2 EE's. They've been visible to each other for months now, yet are still temperamental towards each other. The main culprits are the RR and SLW, but our BR does it as well. The Wyandotte always goes right after the other birds, always has. The Red was a scrapper and un-afraid from a young age. She was less than 1/2 the size, but still tried standing tall and going toe to toe.

I mainly worry about one getting pecked in the eye. The other day, I shoveled the snow away so they could all mingle closer to each other, and the RR and SL went at it(like usual) and our Red drew blood pecking the Wyandotte at her beak base. Nothing bad, but I didn't like to see blood from my girls. The age difference is 2 mos(mid-March vs mid-May).

 

[BrickWall Honey]

Sometimes you just have to step back and let them establish a pecking order, I don't think that giving them more time seperated is going to accomplish anything further. Either, always keep them seperated or take the plunge and be there the 1st day to step in if necessary. Helps to have larger run with some type of structure/shrubs to offer a bit of protection if needed.

 

[Cknldy]

Sometimes it just doesn't work anyhow. No matter what I tried with integrating chickens of the same size in with the RIR flock nothing worked. They were parents to 3 that I did the separate but see cage-in-coop with, hidey spots and all. Parent stock would do minor picking on them while I was around, a week later they killed the only daughter in the bunch! Now I don't know if chickens know about leading humans into false security but that sure seemed to be what happened there! I had also tried adding 2 black jersy giant pullets before that- the RIR's only allowed the BJG's to eat or drink when I was in the coop and completely scalped the most submissive girl. I have noticed over time (with other breeds, I never tried to add anything else with the RIR's) that if you have an area that neither group has laid claim to and put them in it there isn't as big a deal made about getting along. Nothing is 'mine' or 'yours' yet so they are more interested in checking out the new digs. It's worth a try anyhow.

 

[Cknldy]

Oh, I do need to add that all would free-range together just fine. But let someone different go into the RIR coop and it was on!

 

[sdm111]

From my experience some are just incompatible and one will eventually kill the other.