Integrating two flocks, any advice welcome!

[klohman]

Hi - we have 13 chickens currently living in our coop, all between 1-2 years. We recently purchased 6 new chicks first of February. They are approximately 10 weeks old and living in a brooder in the garage. We were planning on integrating the chicks into the big coop this week. We have always moved new members in at night and other than 1 chicken, have no problems besides normal pecking order being a bit off for a few days. During this time we leave them in the coop and enclosed run, not allowing them to free range until they adjust.

So what's the problem?....Just this evening we had a "coop battle" as we refer to them with the older chickens. All our chickens roost in the same areas each night, with the highest ranking chickens always on our tallest roost. Tonight when we went to close the coop door, the 3 on the highest roost were not our "regulars." Our highest 2 on the pecking order where not on the highest roost, and were each on separate ones. We also found one of our RIR's on the floor, breathing and alive but pecked pretty good with quite the bloody gash on her back. Obviously something shook up the order. We left all of them where they were with plans to open the coop door first thing in the morning to give them space from each other if necessary.

The question...Should we wait awhile until this is resolved to integrate our young chicks? Suggestions or advice welcome!

 

[ChickenDaddy523]

I just added two 3 week old young golden sex links to my six 8 week old barred rock pullets. The pullets were pecking and chasing them around in the pin, so I locked them all up in the coop. I haven't seen any camossion and I'm really hoping the flock will take being that they are all young. I'm new to chicken and I'm slightly going off faith and comments I have gotten from my local feed store.

 

[aart]

Hi - we have 13 chickens currently living in our coop, all between 1-2 years. We recently purchased 6 new chicks first of February. They are approximately 10 weeks old and living in a brooder in the garage. We were planning on integrating the chicks into the big coop this week. We have always moved new members in at night and other than 1 chicken, have no problems besides normal pecking order being a bit off for a few days. During this time we leave them in the coop and enclosed run, not allowing them to free range until they adjust.

So what's the problem?....Just this evening we had a "coop battle" as we refer to them with the older chickens. All our chickens roost in the same areas each night, with the highest ranking chickens always on our tallest roost. Tonight when we went to close the coop door, the 3 on the highest roost were not our "regulars." Our highest 2 on the pecking order where not on the highest roost, and were each on separate ones. We also found one of our RIR's on the floor, breathing and alive but pecked pretty good with quite the bloody gash on her back. Obviously something shook up the order. We left all of them where they were with plans to open the coop door first thing in the morning to give them space from each other if necessary.

The question...Should we wait awhile until this is resolved to integrate our young chicks? Suggestions or advice welcome!

I would say YES.....plus I don't really like the idea of integrating by putting them in there at night and waiting to see where the pieces fall.

I'd figure out what happened with your existing flock first.....I wonder first, how much space do they have?


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

Integration of new chickens into 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

 

[klohman]

That's what I would love to know to - is WHY this happened at all? There is no way they are short on space as they have WELL over the 4x4 square foot per chicken requirement. They are in a shed/enclosed run basically. There are always plenty of nesting boxes, and roost space left over. I have noticed we have had a slight decline in eggs in the past few days but attributed it to our continually stormy weather (we are in central IL). This is definitely odd behavior for them.

We have always integrated them at night just because thats what our local provider suggested. I've seen the idea to move a dog crate in to get them acquainted but my husband seems to think that is unnecessary, but I am definitely going to fight harder with this group to get him to cave. I want those babies safe!