mixing chickens??

[samygwin9]

ohmehgawd i have SO many questions about this!
heres the story.

so my farmer friend and I were talking and he says he has some chickens he was going to take up to the auction. i had been looking for a couple more so i said "I'll take a couple but i need to get a quarentine coop ready!".
i'm getting 2 adult/laying hens. i already have 11 "teenage" chickens so i have quite a few questions.
1. how long should i quarentine the newbies?
2. the newbies won't hurt my teenagers will they? will the pecking order be to harsh for the teens?
3.is it even a good idea to mix older chickens with the young?
4. what is the best and safest way to mix them when the quarentines over?

ALL INFORMATION IS HELPFUL!!

 

[gryeyes]

The recommended time to quarantine is 30 days. The best way is to quarantine them quite some distance away from your flock, as some diseases are air-borne, and to change shoes and clothing and wash hands well before going from the QT coop to your regular coop. After quarantine, set them up in an integration/segregation coop either right next to your regular coop or run. They get their own feed and water, of course, but at this point you don't have to deal with the shoe/clothing/hand washing bit. You want them to be able to see each other, hear each other, and even allow for arguments through the fence separating them. Some folks make a small enclosure in the regular run, with chicken wire and a dog house or other small "sleeping quarters." Keep them separate but visible for at least a week; some folks do it for two weeks. By this time, the new chickens are no longer strangers to each other. Then just let them mingle, but provide extra feeders and waterers so bullies don't keep them away. Pecking order skirmishes will be normal, but unless somebody draws blood, do not interfere. Screaming, chasing, feather pulling, all that is NORMAL. If you interfere, it will prolong the process. It's ugly to us, but it IS the Chicken Way of Things. Because you have 11 "tweenagers," and fewer older gals, the tweenies should be okay. They may get pecked, but after four or dive weeks' time, the younger chickens will be closer in size to the older hens. Just so you know, the pecking order process begins all over again any time there is a change of location (you move them to a new coop, for example), and any time a bird is added or removed from the flock. Also, as time goes by, this or that chicken may try to move up in rank. (This especially true with roosters, but can also happen with hens.) It is good you are introducing more than one chicken into your flock; adding a single bird is sometimes really rough on it, as the entire flock gets one target.

 

[Mrs. K]

Generally the older are more dominant, or the flock with the largest number or the home front is more dominant..... so really, I don't think you will have any trouble at all, just get eggs quicker. Chickens with nearly equal dominance seldom have much pecking order problems.

If you have enough total space..... because remember your teenies are still growing, and will need MORE space as they get bigger, so while that group might fit in your set up NOW with room to spare for some more, it might get crowded when they teenies become adults. Crowding birds causes big problems.

As you are adding two, older hens, to many younger hens, should be a good mix. Don't add a single hen, and if you have room for 3 it would be better.

As to the quarantine, if you do not have the space to do it adequately, you are just pretending. If the birds are healthy, and your farmer friend has a healthy flock, 10 to 1 you would be just fine if you add them from the get go.

To properly quarantine requires a great deal of distance between the flocks, and you should have separate feed bowls, and water, and change your shoes and thoroughly wash your hands each time you visit each flock. Some people change their clothes.

If you have a very expensive flock, or are tremendously sensitive, then you should probably not add new birds or follow the quarantine strictly. It is a risk to add birds without quarantine, but many on here think they are quarantining if they are not in the same pen, but if they are sharing air space, they are not quarantining. So they go to a huge hassle, and really they just were lucky.

Mrs K