Mean Aggressive Chicken

Pics
Date sort Score sort
L

lizurmy

In the Brooder
Apr 15, 2020
9
33
44
Hello. We have two Australorp chickens who are a part of our initial flock of 5 (which also includes a Rhode Island Red, Golden Comet, and Leghorn). We’ve recently introduced three new chickens (Brahma) who are now roughly 2 months old to the older group. All of the chickens from the initial group, except one, are being reasonably accepting of the new chickens - chasing them around a bit, but generally being friendly. The one exception is one of our Australoop chickens who is being VERY aggressive and has given us the impression they might even kill the newer chickens if left alone for too long. We’re not sure what to do - and haven’t fully integrated the two groups due to this issue. Suggestions?
 
lizurmy said:
Hello. We have two Australorp chickens who are a part of our initial flock of 5 (which also includes a Rhode Island Red, Golden Comet, and Leghorn). We’ve recently introduced three new chickens (Brahma) who are now roughly 2 months old to the older group. All of the chickens from the initial group, except one, are being reasonably accepting of the new chickens - chasing them around a bit, but generally being friendly. The one exception is one of our Australoop chickens who is being VERY aggressive and has given us the impression they might even kill the newer chickens if left alone for too long. We’re not sure what to do - and haven’t fully integrated the two groups due to this issue. Suggestions?
Click to expand...
Can you build a separate fenced area for a see, no touch zone?
 
Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.
The smaller birds need a place they can retreat to that only they can fit in. And you need a LOT of space with plenty of hiding places and things to perch on.
Pictures of your setup will help with suggestions.
 
Last edited:
Hello and welcome to BYC!

How old is the original group of birds? If they are 6+ months old, these new birds are too young to be mixed in as they are too small yet. It is recommended that chicks be 3 or more months old before mixing in with adult or mature birds, any younger and they not only can't defend themselves but they can be crushed or injured easily. So if this is the case, I suggest you separate these 2 month-olds in a place completely visible to the original flock. Let them all see each other for another month or so. When ever you mix any age of birds, you must integrate them slowly, 2 weeks minimum, from behind a cage, fenced off or some sort of sectioned off place in the coop. They see each other but can touch. Flocks have a pecking order and new birds are never welcome. When you do go to mix in new birds, always put our more feed and water stations so the original flock can't starve the new ones out. It can take months to fully integrate new birds into a flock. Good luck!
 
This is really helpful! Thank you for your quick replies! I’ll send pictures of our coop set-up tomorrow when it’s light out. We have our coop/run built where the younger and older chickens can see but not touch each other - with only short (20-30 minutes) of supervised time together. Both areas have their own food and water. They’ve all been in the see-no-touch set-up for roughly a month now. The older chickens are roughly 15 months old.
 
lizurmy said:
This is really helpful! Thank you for your quick replies! I’ll send pictures of our coop set-up tomorrow when it’s light out. We have our coop/run built where the younger and older chickens can see but not touch each other - with only short (20-30 minutes) of supervised time together. Both areas have their own food and water. They’ve all been in the see-no-touch set-up for roughly a month now. The older chickens are roughly 15 months old.
Click to expand...
I would make a couple of small doors that are big enough for the younger birds to get through but not the older birds. Remove all the older birds from their space and open the doors so the "littles" can come out and figure out where the doors are and how to get to them. Then let the friendliest hen back it to interact with them. After about an hour or whenever is seems like the littles have the doors worked out, allow the older birds back in and allow the sub-flocks to interact with each other. Stay and monitor.
As long as no out right attacks happen and no blood is drawn, leave them be.
Again, I would make sure there are plenty of things to perch on and hide behind in the shared area. The more space, the better. They need LOTS of space.
I've started integration of 2 batches of chicks into an adult flock when the chicks where 4.5 weeks old. By the time they were 6-7 weeks old, they were roosting with the adult flock. Granted, they were as far from them as they could get but the adult flock let them roost. The batch of chicks shown below to the right were hatched 4-29-19. This image was collected 6-18-19.
1625307872956.png
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom