My chicken flocks joining together now ok?

[Susanwhitten28]

Ok so I have a total of 9 chickens 2 Orpington 2 old English and 5 seabrights one being a rooster. They are only about 1 month apart in age but my 4 girls (Orpington and old English) are now big a lot bigger than my seabrights. So yesterday I made my barn totally accessible to them to roam (still have a gate and fence in the area but they can fly over that. Last night the 4 girls stayed in their own corner to roost and all was good but tonight they wanted to all be together I could see my rooster trying to peck them down . I’ve had a bad experience with the pecking order thing and my one Orpington paid for it with half her scalp (she’s alive) do you think they are ok to roost together or should I move them they are all around 3 and a half months older 4 months.

 

[Lovem all]

Make sure they've had enough see no touch access first but seems okay to me.

 

[LadiesAndJane]

Took me a month to get my two groups of pullets together, 6 week age difference. 2 weeks of seeing each other but not physically together, 2 weeks of observed limited togetherness, then all of a sudden they are eating and sleeping together! It takes time, but it will all come together in the end. Multiple threads on the forum describing how to do this. Good luck!

 

[eaking]

It took 10 days for us to get our two younger girls and our two older girls to live peacefully together (and there's only about 7 weeks between them). It felt like eons but now they're grazing and sunbathing together happily. We kept the younger girls in a small coop with hardware cloth on the grass while the older girls free-ranged around them. At night, we brought the younger girls back inside into the brooder. Better safe than sorry.