Introducing a unplanned chicken

[hatchies]

Today I got a phone call from a good friend who needed to get rid of a chick asap. It's a long story, but I agreed. It was totally unplanned and almost dusk so we had very little time to figure things out. The chick is old enough to be outside now so I'm not worried about that but as soon as we put it in the coop the other girls immediately started to panic, even trying to attack (we expected this so my husband stayed in the coop and was able to keep a bit of peace). After stepped away they almost acted scared of the chick, although they were still puffy so I know they were feeling protective of their original flock.

We didn't have time to put together any type of quarantine so we put the new chick in the laying boxes and blocked the other chickens out so they could calm down. I opened the coop and let them old girls roam around the yard for a bit until the sun went down. When I went to check on them tonight and shut the coop door those dang hens had somehow got the barricade down, got in the coop and the poor chick was outside of the coop crying.

What do I do tonight? I really don't have time to handle it tomorrow so do I let my big girls roam and leave the new chick in the coop alone? I hate to do that when I can't be around to pay attention all day because of dogs. This just so happens to be a time when i don't have time to chicken-sit or figure out housing for a new one. Can anyone give me some pointers?

Thanks! BYC is awesome!

 

[JFreeman]

If you have an old medium-sized dog crate, I would put your new chick inside it, and set the crate inside the coop so it will be safe from the others as well as predators, at least until you can figure something more permanent out. Just make sure you have food and water in with her. Just throwing that out there as a possibility..