Newbie!

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Rowena Ong

Rowena Ong

In the Brooder
5 Years
Apr 23, 2014
3
1
11
Ermington Devon
Hi, I'm new here and new to keeping chickens! Have got 3 lohman brown hens and 1 Rhode Island Red hen! Just had to give up my cockerel also a rir as he was nasty! I'm thinking of introducing 2 new hens and a cockerel at the weekend, does anyone have any advise? Xxxx
 
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Welcome to BYC!

Sorry you had to rehome the roo. Sometimes they are mean and no one needs a nasty rooster!

Adding new birds needs to be done slowly so the pecking order in the existing flock is not thrown into chaos. Keep the new birds in a cage or fenced off area, but within the flock. Keep them this way for about 3 weeks. Everybody sees, nobody touches. This not only gives the new birds some quarantine time, but allows the existing flock to work the pecking order out from behind wire. When mixing day comes, the aggression's should be to a minimum. Always watch closely that first day and throughout that first week for any trouble. And always intervene if it turns bloody. But generally things are fairly quiet for the most part.

Enjoy your new flock! Make yourself at home here on BYC and welcome to our flock!
 
Hello :frow and Welcome To BYC! TwoCrows gave you some good advice about integrating flocks. There is a good article in the Learning Center on combining flocks, and you might want to consider quarantining the new birds away form the old ones first depending on where you are getting them. https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/adding-to-your-flock Sorry about your roo, the RIR roos sometimes are rather temperamental.
You might also like to check out the BYC Learning Center, lots of good articles on all aspects of chicken keeping. https://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/1/Learning_Center
 
Hello & welcome to BYC. You can add but you need to quarantine first. You never want to just add new birds to the flock. You can find great info on this site about it. Best of luck :)
 
Congratulations on your new chickens, hope they do well for you. Usually adding a roo to a flock of hens isn't much trouble. Be sure to keep a close eye on the hens though in case the older girls decide to gang up on the new ones... you may have to separate them until they are used to each other.
 

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