New to Chicks and I have a few Questions

[barngem]

1) Anyone every have an old mama chicken that was willing to take over brooder chicks?
2) I have two adult chickens, 1 roo 1 hen, when it is time how do I introduce my new chicks to the other two?
3) These came from a hachery do I have to be concerned with lice or mites. What I am getting at is should I do anything preventative before I put them outside with other chickens. I dont have DE yet but I will be ordering some for the chicken yard and barnyard?
4) Not a chicken question but Thought I could use DE around the horse barn too stalls isle, just as preventative measure.( I will buy Food Grade) anyone out there have horses too and have an input on that? I prefer to use Natural products like this as much as possible?
5) How old should they be before I move them to the coop?

I have a safe predator free coop and pen. Plus an attack barn cat that sleeps on top of the chicken coop. 1/4" hardware cloth around bottom of cage burried 6" and goes up 4' to small 1/2" chicken wire, then the top has bird netting over it. My coop has a wire screen cover for the door that goes on and is locked in place at night. My front door had a wood barrier at the bottom that it butts up to and then the latches are spring loaded latches with a safety catch that holds the latch in place. Hen house on stilts with a solid bottom.
When I first got my hen she had 3 pretty little bantam chicks, and after a few week in a temp cage in my tack room a weasle got in there and killed the babies, The reason I think it was a weasle was because the door on the room was latched and the cage was too but the poor little chickens were decapitated. Something had to have crawled under the crack in the door and through the mesh 1" mesh of the cage. I was told some weasles can get through 5/8" opening.
It never touched my hen but she just sat in the corner of the cage and shivered. I opened the cage and she ran an hid the whole day. She finally came back at night and I moved her to the basement of our house.
I just told people what is the difference if you have a parrot in a cage or I have a little bantam hen. As long as I kept things clean it was a perfect and safe place until the coop was built.
Anyway open to suggestions for the above mentioned questions.

 

[meriruka]

Sorry about your little chicks.

I'll try to help with the ?'s
1) No. Hens are almost always mean to newcomers.
2) When the little ones are big enough & fast enough to get away from the older ones.
3) Lice or mites are more likely to be on your older outside chickens than on your chicks at this point. The DE is the best idea if you want to stay away from chemicals. I usually find poultry lice on chicks hatched under a broody (because mom doesn't get outside to dust), never had any on hatchery chicks. If you find any lice, you can rub some DE under the fluff of the chicks from the neck down and within minutes the lice die & drop off. Repeat 10 days later.
4)Never had horses, hopefully someone else can help......
5)Depends on the temps. After 6 weeks, they are fine with anything above 60 degrees. It's usually helpful if you partition them from your older birds, so that they can see each other but not touch, they will get used to seeing each other & there is usually less fighting when you remove the partition.

Good luck with your new additions.