What are some tips to remember when I'm integrating the younger birds with the older birds?
I like having my brooder in the coop. The chicks essentially grow up with the flock, which I think makes integration easier. And they are trained to return to the coop at night. For this to work you need electricity to the coop and you need a coop big enough. The hardest part of this to me is the wild temperature swings you can get brooding outside. You need to keep an area warm enough in the coldest temperatures and an area cool enough in the warmest. That can be challenging when your temperatures can change 50 degrees Fahrenheit overnight.
All the normal integration things. Lots of room indoors and outside, well scattered feeders and waterers, and clutter that gives them places to hide. It helps to have weather where they can all be outside when they are awake.
Patience. As much as you can, let the do things at their own pace. Don't force them to share a small area, thinking they will fight it out and learn to get along. It doesn't work that way. Don't stick them on the roosts at night, thinking they have to roost. They don't. They can be quite happy sleeping on the floor and not getting beat up by the older girls. I don't care where mine sleep as long as it is not in the nests and is somewhere predator safe. When they feel comfortable they will move to the main roosts on their own. I try to interfere with them as little as I can.
Never a single chick or chicken. An absolute minimum of two. They are social animals and really do better with company. Until they reach a certain maturity level and join the main flock pecking order they need a buddy. It's OK if the two or more of them form a sub-flock and don't hang out with the adults. That's normal in my flock.
You can use some form of creep feeder to keep the hens from eating what you feed the chicks. You cannot keep the chicks from eating what you feed the hens. By the time my broody-raised chicks are two weeks old they are flying up to the big-girl feeders. I usually have immature chickens in my flock so I never feed Layer with the higher calcium content. Instead I feed a low-calcium Starter or Grower to all of them with oyster shell on the side for the ones that need the calcium for their egg shells.
Personally I like my chicks to develop a strong a strong immune system instead of trying to raise them in a sterile environment and then exposing them to the world unprepared. So on the second or third day in the brooder I start feeding them a small amount of dirt from the run where the big chickens are, maybe twice a week. This gets grit in their system, gets probiotics into their system that the older ones have to share, and gets them started on flock immunities if they need that. I'm mainly thinking of immunity to Coccidiosis but there are others. By the time mine leave the brooder and hit the ground they have developed any immunity they need to Coccidiosis if it is there to start with. I can observe my chicks better in the brooder than if they out running around. If you keep the brooder dry Coccidiosis is seldom a problem anyway but it is easier to spot in the brooder.
A lot of this is personal preference, we all have that. I think these are the things that have kept me from ever losing a brooder-raised or broody-raised chick to another adult in my flock. Luck plays into that too.
Good luck and welcome to this part of the adventure.
