Lone chicken - looking for solutions

[NatJ]

So, I went ahead and put my older chicken in with the babies today and watched. First, it pretty much ignored the babies and focused on trying to escape the brooder. Unfortunately when it finally started paying attention to the babies it started pecking at their feet, so I intervened three times and then took it out of there...Any thoughts?

Chicks will peck at everything, a few times.
If it breaks the skin to draw blood, or it tugs on the toes and knocks the babies over, then of course you have to intervene.

Otherwise, I might just let it keep trying to peck toes for a bit--it will eventually figure out that they are not good to eat.

There's a point where it's best to just let them work it out for themselves, and there's a different point where you have to intervene to prevent injury--unfortunately, it can be hard to recognize what point is where. (And harder yet to try to guess it from a distance!)

So I don't know whether to advise lots of short sessions, or a long stretch of watching it try over and over to eat toes until it gets bored.

Chickens do peck things to learn about them, and they do peck as part of their communication, and they do peck to eat--so it can be hard to guess what is going on at any specific instant.

 

[IOT]

Hmmm...it was definitely tugging at feet, that's why I felt I had to intervene...

 

[Eggs2chicks]

This is my first time posting here. I'm excited to be part of this community!

This is also my first time raising chickens. I got my first order of chicks four weeks ago and unfortunately only one of them made it alive. I was able to "foster" a chicken from a friend to keep my lone chicken company. They get along very well and they are now 4 and 6 weeks old. Unfortunately, the time has come when I have to return the 6-week old and my 4-week old chick would be alone again. I have a few days-old chicks that were just delivered yesterday, but my lone chick is too big to be with them, and I'm assuming I'd need to wait quite a while to introduce the lone chick to the babies?

My friend has offered me another chick of the same breed as the 6-week old I'm now fostering (at this point I wanted to keep the chicken I fostered but that option does not seem available) but about 3-weeks old, and which I would be able to keep. Would these two chicks be able to bond if introduce them to to each other now? would it be best to wait as long as possible to separate the ones I currently have, or would it be better to make the transition sooner? Would it help to home the three of them together for a bit to facilitate the transition, or would that not help because the new one might be excluded? I'm assuming that separating the two of them now and keeping my lone chick alone for some time until the days-old chick are old enough is not an option?

Any help will be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Can you just keep chicken wire in between the babies and your older chick? They may just start cuddling up to her???

 

[NatJ]

Hmmm...it was definitely tugging at feet, that's why I felt I had to intervene...

You were there, I was not. You probably made the right decision

 

[IOT]

Can you just keep chicken wire in between the babies and your older chick? They may just start cuddling up to her???

Yes, that's he other option NatJ suggested. I went ahead and tried that because I was too chicken (lol!) to try again without the chicken wire in-between. I actually put both of the older chickens there (with chicken wire in-between) and they were fine. Good news, though, I was able to convince the girl to sell me the foster chicken so I'm keeping it after all! Now I'll have to work on integrating these two with the babies (two-weeks old now!), but at least I don't have to separate these two. I'll probably start another post to see what's best in terms of integrating these two older ones with the 2-week-old babies. I'm also expecting a new shipment of babies this week (fingers cross everything goes well!) so I'll be needing to do a lot of figuring it out in terms of integration within the next few weeks...

 

[IOT]

You were there, I was not. You probably made the right decision

Sorry it took me so long to reply! I think this chicken is a little crazy in terms of how it eats (pecks really hard at the food, for some reason), so perhaps it was treating baby chicks' feet as food, which almost looks aggressive. Anyway, I also think the fact that it was stressed by the brief separation from the foster chick while I tried this didn't help. But now that I get to keep the foster chick I'll be trying other ways to integrate them. Thank you for all the advise, I'm sure I'll keep asking questions!