Introducing new chicks

[rsneddon10]

Hello,

We currently have two 2 year old Americauna hens. Today I got 2 white leghorn chicks, they are about 2-3 weeks. It's will be a few weeks until they are ready to go to the coop. My question my concern is how to introduce the new chicks to the existing hens ? I am wondering how they will react to the new kids on the block and how to do it. My dominant hen is the one I am most concerned with how she will treat the new chicks.

 

[klohman]

We put our metal dog crate inside of our coop to get them comfortable. This way they can all see and get used to each other, but not hurt each other, and they all have access to food and water. We did that for about a week and a half then we started slowly letting the littles range with the bigs for very short periods (they mostly stay separate anyway). After that, we began just leaving the crate door open and eventually took the crate out and they figured it out! About a 3 weeks process total, but everything went swimmingly. Just be sure that you do expect some pecking order business, but don't intervene unless it gets bad, it is nature after all.

I realize you may not have room for a dog crate with only 2 birds, but the same principal will apply with any separating device!