oh so painful to watch....

[Black Cochin Bantams]

I have to combine age groups from time to time. I have found I have less trouble if I put the dominate birds(older) in the less dominant pen(younger). If I put the younger ones in the older pen there is terrible pecking and an occasional death.

 

[equinelyn]

How old is the baby? I have to introduce mine, but the babies are 6 weeks. So I'm going to wait til 4 months because 2 of them are silky's and they are smaller.

 

[ladybug99]

My hens all look exactly the same.....all except for the one lowest on the pecking order she is a bit lighter than the rest.. its hard to seperate them if you can't tell them apart

The pecking has stopped only after a few hours of being out side this morning.

Equinelyn --- Gracie is about 6 weeks and is a Welsummer... she has been in the coop with the big girls in a dogs cage since she was about three weeks. They are familiar with her. She is about 1/2 thier size right now. Everything I read was telling me to wait another month or two but I wanted to start intregrating her as she was starting to show signs of being bored and getting very aggitated in the cage.. she was pacing back and forth and just not a happy camper all around. She is pretty content right now....I found that having some hiding places where she can only get into is helping out a lot.. and she is much faster than the older hens she can easily out run them at this point. I have put out extra water and food locations as the bigger girls are very protective of thiers at this time.