New chicken mom here with a quick question about integrating new chicks

[Slvogel8]

Hi there! I am new to chicken keeping, but so far everything has been great and I love my girls!
I have 4 Wyandottes and 3 light brahmas that just starting laying about a month ago and when TSC gave me an offer I couldn't refuse (chicken math ) I brought home 6 Americanas who are now 10 weeks old. I put them in the run with chicken wire with my older gals 2 weeks ago. With the weather here in North East ohio changing quickly, I was wondering if it was safe to let them fully out in the run now? They are a bit smaller than the Wyandottes, but of course way smaller than the brahmas...but they are so sweet, and have basically ignored the babies these last two weeks. I have one Wyandotte that like to hang out and stick her head through the wire to drink their water and hangs out there a lot. I am hoping that's a good sign.
Any suggestions? Thanks!!

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I put chickens outside full time at 4 weeks sometimes in early spring. Yours are overdue in my opinion.

 

[kattabelly]

I'd expect the older pullets to pay more attention and for there to be some chasing and pecking once the younger ones are in "their" space but they should be plenty big enough to cope. It might even have been easier to do it earlier when there was enough of a size difference that you could give the littles a safe space to escape to.

Do you have plenty of clutter in the run for them to hide behind (no dead ends where they could get trapped) and more than one feeder and waterer, out of sight of each other?

 

[Slvogel8]

I'd expect the older pullets to pay more attention and for there to be some chasing and pecking once the younger ones are in "their" space but they should be plenty big enough to cope. It might even have been easier to do it earlier when there was enough of a size difference that you could give the littles a safe space to escape to.

Do you have plenty of clutter in the run for them to hide behind (no dead ends where they could get trapped) and more than one feeder and waterer, out of sight of each other?

Yes, they have their own little house that only they can get into and there are a few feeders and waterers. I can't necessarily hide them, but they are in separate places away from each other.

 

[Slvogel8]

I put chickens outside full time at 4 weeks sometimes in early spring. Yours are overdue in my opinion.

They've been outside since 4 weeks as well, but I put them in the main coop/run area, separated by chicken wire 2 weeks ago hoping they would get used to the older girls. Just wondering if it's safe to take the chicken wire down now.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

They've been outside since 4 weeks as well, but I put them in the main coop/run area, separated by chicken wire 2 weeks ago hoping they would get used to the older girls. Just wondering if it's safe to take the chicken wire down now.

Gotcha. I get distracted easily lol. I would give it a try supervised for a couple hours and see how it goes. Do you have some clutter in your run for the younger ones to get behind if they need to?

 

[Mrs. K]

The thing is, you have basically doubled your flock. The question is, how much space do you have?

A couple of things are possible:

• they will ignore each other, the littles will be a sub flock until they begin to lay, at that point they will be one flock.
• The older birds will terrorize them.
• Often what happens is you have one or two mean old biddies, that lead the attacks, and the rest follow.
• A good thing is that you are adding more than the old chicken group, attacking is hard work, and with that many it will spread the pecking out.

But not only do you need this to get along now, but through the long nights of winter. So the real question is, your doubled your flock, did you double your coop?

Overcrowding causes a lot of very ugly behaviors in chickens. Often what appears to be more than enough room when they are chicks, rapidly becomes not enough room when they are full grown. Measure your coop, take some pictures and post.

For 13 birds, I would want a 5 x 10 or 6 x 9 coop.

Mrs K