Just being prepared

[MotherHen75]

I am incubating 6 eggs, day 6 right now. 2 Of the eggs are showing good progress, veins and beating hearts. Maybe even 3, 2 of the eggs (not the ones showing progress) are dark and especially hard to see through so i cant tell yet but. I have heard that raising a lone baby chick is bad and it can die of loneliness, can the same happen to 2 of them?

I had a friend who raised just one chick and that chick was great with people but bad with other chickens. It was scared of everything, wouldn't eat or drink. So i'm expecting at least 2 of them to hatch, I just want to be sure they'll be fine.

We have 8 other chickens, a rooster and 7 hens. Were gonna separate the chicks from the other chickens (the chickens are 6 months, pretty young) until they are big enough, we are also gonna get rid of our rooster if one of the chicks is male. The rooster we have now has killed 2 other roosters, we don't want a chicken that will hurt our other animals.

Will the hens accept another hen and or rooster? And will the hatchlings be fine with just one other with it?

 

[Mosey2003]

Two will be okay, although more would be better.

Depends on what you mean by accept. Your rooster killing rooster is just being a rooster, that's what they do. Unless you have a big enough flock for them to portion out some girls for each of them, they're gonna fight, often to the death. It's what they do. The hens will accept the new kids eventually, but they're going to bicker and squabble at first. If you can house them together but separated by a fence for quite awhile, the fighting should be less. You'll want them to all be the same size when introduced.

 

[Tommy Kirby]

Two will be okay, although more would be better.

Depends on what you mean by accept. Your rooster killing rooster is just being a rooster, that's what they do. Unless you have a big enough flock for them to portion out some girls for each of them, they're gonna fight, often to the death. It's what they do. The hens will accept the new kids eventually, but they're going to bicker and squabble at first. If you can house them together but separated by a fence for quite awhile, the fighting should be less. You'll want them to all be the same size when introduced.

What I did to introduce them to one another. (I have a walk in coop) Is build a smaller pen inside the coop. I put the 2 month old birds in the pen so the big birds couldn't get to them. But could see them. Worked out well.
Tom