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Chirping
I have two sets of 5 chicks that i am going to try and integrate this weekend. The older bunch are 7 (2 of them) to 8 (3 of them) weeks old, and 4/5 are cockerels (maybe all five, but thats another thread...). My younger group is 4 to 5 weeks old and have outgrown their brooder box. The older group lives in the main run/coop, and for the last 2 weeks i have been bringing the younger chicks out and placing them in a side run that shares a "wall" with the main run. They are out there for 1-3 hours a day during the week, and all day on the weekends.
Tonight they will be having some supervised time with the big chicks in the main run, and tomorrow they will be out there all day (if everything goes well tonight).
First question; Should they be OK together since they have seen each other frequently over the last 2 weeks? They stick there heads through the shared fence and talk/peck at each other, but there doesn't seem to be any problems between them.
Second question; As mentioned above, I ended up with A LOT of cockerels from the straightrun bins, and we will only ultimately keep one. out of the 10 chicks, 6 or 7 will have to be rehomed/sent to freezer camp (if i can convince my wife to eat them lol). At what point should i separate out the extra cockerels? I don't want fights over the pullets, and if i let them go at it for too long i know the pecking order will just be re-shuffled when i remove them. We already know which rooster we will be keeping long term so it makes sense (to me) that we let him have the top spot without too much competition, but we don't want to get rid of the rest before we have to.
Thank you BYC, I have much to learn!
Tonight they will be having some supervised time with the big chicks in the main run, and tomorrow they will be out there all day (if everything goes well tonight).
First question; Should they be OK together since they have seen each other frequently over the last 2 weeks? They stick there heads through the shared fence and talk/peck at each other, but there doesn't seem to be any problems between them.
Second question; As mentioned above, I ended up with A LOT of cockerels from the straightrun bins, and we will only ultimately keep one. out of the 10 chicks, 6 or 7 will have to be rehomed/sent to freezer camp (if i can convince my wife to eat them lol). At what point should i separate out the extra cockerels? I don't want fights over the pullets, and if i let them go at it for too long i know the pecking order will just be re-shuffled when i remove them. We already know which rooster we will be keeping long term so it makes sense (to me) that we let him have the top spot without too much competition, but we don't want to get rid of the rest before we have to.
Thank you BYC, I have much to learn!
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