Long time lurker first time poster!

Bat

Songster
Oct 21, 2017
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Hello everyone, just thought I’d make a quick intro but first I’d like to say thanks for posting all of your tips and advice up here. It’s helped us out of a bind on more than a 1000 occasions.

My wife Sarah and I live out in Oxfordshire, England and have recently begun expanding our family with chickens. We’ve been hatching eggs that are either from my mother’s random bantam stock or from shipped/local collected eggs for the past 4-5 months.

Our first clutch went in at the beginning of June 2017 and consisted of 5 random bantams as a control and 6 chamois polish. Of these we ended up with 3 random bantam roosters and two polish (we strongly suspect) hens. We rehomed one rooster and will shortly be dispatching of one other for the sake of the neighbours.

Our second clutch went in during late July and produced one random bantam rooster, and a frizzle rooster and hen. They have just moved outside into a smaller coop next to the main run.

Our last clutch went in mid September and produced 6 vorwerk, our first 100% hatch rate. Three are roosters and three are hens. They’re still inside stinking the place up.

So we currently have 13 chickens of various sizes and 6 of them are roosters :-/

I have a feeling most of my questions are going to be about integrating them at this point?!

Other than chickens, we have a band and enjoy drinking wine and eating food.

Thanks for having us.
Bat & Sarah.
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Some great info here, thanks - I’ll do some more reading. I think the main problem we have currently is that we (assuming we’ve dispatched of the 2nd bigger rooster) have 3 youngsters and only one is a hen. I’m not sure we can introduce the two small roosters to the bigger one(s). But we also can’t just plop the young hen in on her own. The vorwerk are almost the same size as the younger bantams so we may need to integrate them with the younger guys, do away with roosters and then move them in. But that leaves us with 3 chickens in the big run and 9 in the small one perhaps. Bit of a quagmire :)
 
Some great info here, thanks - I’ll do some more reading. I think the main problem we have currently is that we (assuming we’ve dispatched of the 2nd bigger rooster) have 3 youngsters and only one is a hen. I’m not sure we can introduce the two small roosters to the bigger one(s). But we also can’t just plop the young hen in on her own. The vorwerk are almost the same size as the younger bantams so we may need to integrate them with the younger guys, do away with roosters and then move them in. But that leaves us with 3 chickens in the big run and 9 in the small one perhaps. Bit of a quagmire :)
With a bit of juggling, I'm sure you will work it out, but with winter approaching and the birds maybe opting to stay most of the time in their coops, it may be better to swap the flocks between the two runs. Feather pecking can occur when birds have insufficient space, and that is more likely to be during the winter months. Dunno if your runs are covered, but that could ease things a little. This link on space requirements is very good imo - http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-much-room-do-chickens-need
 
:welcome

Hi Bat & Sarah! Those are some beautiful birds you hatched. Best of luck with your future hatches!

I used the "look but don't touch" method to integrate in the past and it worked well. Put up some sort of temporary barrier between the older birds and the littles so they can see each other but not make contact. After 2-3 weeks, try letting them all out to free range (if you do that) and provide the littles with places they can duck for cover if they are getting harassed. Some people have had luck placing the younger birds inside the coop after nightfall but I've never tried that.

Hope all goes well!
 
With a bit of juggling, I'm sure you will work it out, but with winter approaching and the birds maybe opting to stay most of the time in their coops, it may be better to swap the flocks between the two runs. Feather pecking can occur when birds have insufficient space, and that is more likely to be during the winter months. Dunno if your runs are covered, but that could ease things a little. This link on space requirements is very good imo - http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-much-room-do-chickens-need

The main run is fully covered and about 12x8 so there’s a lot of space in there. The smaller one is only partially covered and a paltry 2x6. I think it’s too small for more than a few youngsters. I’ve been letting them free range together with supervision but I’m usually intervening. It’ll work out as you say - thanks for the tips.
 
:welcome

Hi Bat & Sarah! Those are some beautiful birds you hatched. Best of luck with your future hatches!

I used the "look but don't touch" method to integrate in the past and it worked well. Put up some sort of temporary barrier between the older birds and the littles so they can see each other but not make contact. After 2-3 weeks, try letting them all out to free range (if you do that) and provide the littles with places they can duck for cover if they are getting harassed. Some people have had luck placing the younger birds inside the coop after nightfall but I've never tried that.

Hope all goes well!
Thank you! We’re doing the look don’t touch thing for about two weeks now and letting them free range together but separating them when fights break out. Wouldn’t feel confident putting them in at night and hoping for the best I think...
 

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