Introducing Chicks

[blue_hydrangea_homestead]

I know this is a common question, but I have 7 week old chicks that have been in an enclosed run with a screen between them and my older flock. I’m introducing them outside while they “free range” and I can supervise them.

My only concern is, I have two barred rocks that are mean to them and one of which is dominant and acts like a rooster to my other hens. Is there a way to break her of that meanness?

One barred rock pecked a chick and kind of tossed her around a little, and to anyone who knows, I recently had an issue with coccidiosis and one of my chicks is still a little bit smaller than the others. So naturally she gets bullied by the big hens more.

Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Mrs. K]

Lift the screen up off the floor of the coop. Just a couple of inches. This will create a safety zone. The chicks can escape to here but the big girl can't follow. Also a pallet laid flat on some bricks in the middle of the run is another great escape. Chicks can approach it on a dead run, and from all sides. I feed in the safety zone for about a week, or until I see chicks eating next to big girls.

Let the big girls out into the yard when you set this up with a cup of coffee? and wait with the chicks inside their area. Eventually one of them will get brave enough to come out of the safety zone underneath the raised up fencing. Get up and stomp your feet, so that they scurry back to the safe zone.

That's it. I would leave the door to the run open, so that the big girls can come and go. At first the littles won't get far from the safety zone. But they are quicker than lightening, and as long as they can escape a meanie, they generally do.

If you have an especially mean one, get pin less peepers and put them on her for 6 weeks.

I have done this many times, and really the chicks are integrated in a matter of a few days.

Mrs K

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Lift the screen up off the floor of the coop. Just a couple of inches. This will create a safety zone. The chicks can escape to here but the big girl can't follow. Also a pallet laid flat on some bricks in the middle of the run is another great escape. Chicks can approach it on a dead run, and from all sides. I feed in the safety zone for about a week, or until I see chicks eating next to big girls.

Let the big girls out into the yard when you set this up with a cup of coffee? and wait with the chicks inside their area. Eventually one of them will get brave enough to come out of the safety zone underneath the raised up fencing. Get up and stomp your feet, so that they scurry back to the safe zone.

That's it. I would leave the door to the run open, so that the big girls can come and go. At first the littles won't get far from the safety zone. But they are quicker than lightening, and as long as they can escape a meanie, they generally do.

If you have an especially mean one, get pin less peepers and put them on her for 6 weeks.

I have done this many times, and really the chicks are integrated in a matter of a few days.

Mrs K

Thank you! You may have cut a week off the integration schedule.

I’ve let the two noobies meet the 6-1/2 month olds one at a time, and it’s going pretty well (tolerance for about five minutes, and then “out of my sight!”), but I hadn’t thought through the escape hole to their own area.