I have 5 new hens all about 17/18 weeks old.
Thanks for the age, that helps. They are not mature hens, they are immature pullets, that makes some difference in behaviors. Mine usually start acting like mature hens instead of immature pullets around the time they start to lay. Them starting to lay seems like a passage into adulthood and acceptance into the flock.
Until my pullets reach that stage they usually form a sub-flock. They exist in the same coop and run but avoid the adults day and night. I have over 3,000 square feet outside. During the day if the adults are resting under the mulberry tree the pullets may be under the plum tree. If the adults are in the coop the pullets are outside. There is no conflict, no one gets hurt, but they just avoid each other. At night the adults sleep on the main roost. The pullets sleep somewhere else. I put a juvenile roost in my main coop that is lower than the main roosts, separated horizontally by a few feet, and higher than the nests to give hem a safe place to sleep that is not my nests. This phase is where you real a lot about them sleeping in the nests. Until I put that juvenile roost in I sometimes had the same problems. Sometimes the pullets would continue to sleep on the coop floor until they matured enough to move to the main roosts.
My goal during integration is that no one gets hurt. I don't worry about them being one big happy family, that stuff comes later after they mature.
I also have 5 oldies that I have had for 2+ years! I have the new ones in the coop and enclosed run, and I have the new ones temporarily in a little garden house. The oldies free range everyday but are cross/ don’t want to go into the temporary coop and I have to lift them one by one over to it. How long should I leave it until I let the newcomers free range and let the others back into their coop?
I'm not sure I totally understand what is gong on with the different coops but that doesn't matter. I don't have to. Where do you want them to sleep at the end of the day? How big is that and what do the roosts look like?
I do mine two different ways. In both cases the brooder is in the coop so the chicks are raised with the flock. If I have enough room (not a lot of chickens) in the main coop I open the brooder door at 5 weeks. That's it for integration. With my set-up that works.
This one is closer to your situation with your two coops. If the main coop is crowded I put the juveniles in what I call my grow-out coop which has a run section with it. I leave them locked in that grow-out coop and run where the adults can see them until they return to that grow-out coop to sleep on their own each night. It usually takes a little more than a week but sometimes three weeks. Then I open the gates and let them mingle as they will. They avoid each other day and night until they mature but there is no violence.
Your situation is different to mine in that yours were not raised in the coop and yours should be pretty close to laying. I don't know what your two coops or run(s) look like or what that free ranging looks like. I don't have any problems with what littledog said, that should work. Once I was comfortable they would all return to where you want them to sleep, either same coop or two different coops, I'd let them out to mingle when I could observe. See what happens and base my actions on that. If they don't all move into the same coop on their own, I'd wait until they have proven to me that they can get along outside with lots of room before I moved them into the same coop at night.
We can make this sound as if it is really hard. A lot of times it isn't at all hard especially if they have a decent amount to room and we don't push it. Try not to force them to share a tight space but let them work that out in their own.
Good luck!
