Pecking order/New birds with current

[HayCreekHomestead]

Hello! I currently have 8 pullets that are 16 weeks of age. They are golden comets and New Hampshire reds. About a week ago a fox came in and drug 3 hens off. One of them being my head hen. The girls that were left have been a little lost and are currently working on establishing the new pecking order. Would now be a good time to add 10 more hens of around the same age/size? My run is 30 feet by 35 feet and my coop has 60 sqft of space with 5 nesting boxes. My dad (an old school farmer) told me that I should just wait until my girls go in to roost for the night and then add the new girls in with them. But I don’t want to cause any trouble. Thanks in advance for your help! Attached are pictures of my run and coop!

 

[azygous]

There's more to the pecking order than just sneaking in ten new hens under cover of night. When they all wake in the morning, they will all still be strangers and suspicious of each other. The pecking order will still be shaken up, and conflict will be part of this.

A better method would be a barrier that they can see one another but not make contact. After about three days, you can take down the barrier and let them do a little mash up and settle some of the rank lineup.

I'd then put the barrier back up to give things a rest, then repeat the process next day, and the next until all are sporting their new ranks in the pecking order and things are relatively peaceful.

If you have enough eggs with these remaining eight hens, it would be much easier, and also much safer, to introduce baby chicks into the flock of eight adults. If you brood the chicks in close proximity to the hens, integration will be very easy as the chicks will be considered flock from the beginning. In six months, you will have ten new layers.

I made only a brief allusion to the safety of introducing new chickens to your flock. Adult chickens should be placed under observation in a segregated area in case they carry a respiratory disease. Quarantine might save the rest of the flock from getting it. But it will do nothing to screen out an avian virus. These forums are heavily populated with threads bemoaning diseases brought into a flock of previously healthy chickens by importing grown chickens that are carrying disease but not necessarily symptomatic.

If baby chicks had been chosen as the way to expand a flock, so much grief could have been avoided because hatchery chicks can be generally relied upon to be disease free.

 

[HayCreekHomestead]

While I do plan on doing the barrier method, the new hens are coming from a local farmer and they are in much of the same environment as my current flock just a few miles up the road. My flock came from a large farm supply store and were sickly and all suffered from pasty butt. I lost 2 the first night I brought them home. The 10 new hens are within a week of being the same age as my current girls.

 

[aart]

my coop has 60 sqft of space

Your coop does not look that big.
Space is most important when doing an integration.

 

[HayCreekHomestead]

Your coop does not look that big.
Space is most important when doing an integration.

It is that big, we added extra nesting boxes and about 20 sqft to the back before we put the girls in there the first time.

 

[HayCreekHomestead]

It is that big, we added extra nesting boxes and about 20 sqft to the back before we put the girls in there the first time.

There’s 15 pullets in this picture with plenty of space left

 

[aart]

It is that big, we added extra nesting boxes and about 20 sqft to the back before we put the girls in there the first time.

...and after the pic in the first post was taken?
What are the dimensions of the coop, not including nests?