Logistics of splitting flock

[MarkJr]

Hi, my name is Mark and I have too many chickens.

I’ve crept up in numbers of my flock so they are too crowded in my coop. The ones I were going to keep were 4 sapphire gems, 6 dominant coppers, my broody barnyard mutt.

My wife’s uncle wanted a replacement flock but thinks brooding chicks is the biggest pain in the butt, so I crammed 8 bar rocks, and 4 Australorp chicks under my broody. Also have 2 eighteen week SLW and one 18 week sapphire gem in the mix we were going to rehome to him.

Now we’ve decided that we’d like to keep the barred rocks and my broody.

So..... long and short. How will four 7-8 week old australorps, The three 18 week pullets and the ten 30 week pullets get along in a new coop. Specifically the 4 young ones. The 18 week olds know the ropes. They were weaned from my broody at 7.5 weeks and have been in with the older pullets long enough to be comfortable at bottom of order.

Uncles coop is 8x10 with a 20x10 run used to lock them up to force nest box use. Rest of time they free range.

I’m excited to be back at my magic chicken number.

 

[centrarchid]

Jumble things up in coop and run so no body on home turf. Place a couple lawn chairs on their side in run. Move roost poles around if you can.

 

[MarkJr]

Jumble things up in coop and run so no body on home turf. Place a couple lawn chairs on their side in run. Move roost poles around if you can.

Everyone I’m moving are going into an empty coop.

 

[centrarchid]

Everyone I’m moving are going into an empty coop.

Follow same procedure so low ranking can avoid high ranking aggressors.

 

[MitchW]

They're going to have to go through and establish their pecking order. It's just something they have to go through and there is no avoiding it. It depends on their personalities as far as how long it will take and how rough it will be. Most likely the older ones will pick on the youngest ones. The good thing is that the new coop will not be home turf for any of them. For that reason there is hope that it won't be too bad. You will still want to monitor them as much as possible the first few days. I love Ring cameras so I can keep an eye on them without having to be out there constantly. And to explain further what I believe centrarchid was trying to say, you want to create obstacles that will help those being chased. For example, in my run I put a bunch of logs such that if a little one was being chased they could run under the log but the bigger one couldn't thus giving the little one a chance to get away unscathed.

 

[aart]

Hi, my name is Mark and I have too many chickens.