Hello!
So our little chicks (Freckles, Gabby, and Penny) are six weeks old now, out-grown their tub in our living room, and we're working on moving them to the outside coop. We've been doing slow yard introductions (at a distance, at first), and then moved up to all our birds in the yard at once. We have two adult hens (Lady Cluck and Sparra). Lady Cluck doesn't seem to give one whit about the chicks (she is our top hen), but Sparra is a bit more incensed about it.
Yesterday, the chicks had their first close encounter with Sparra when she pulled a few feathers from Freckles. They scattered, and now they're giving her a wide berth, moving off whenever she comes close. She hasn't pecked them again, but she has given them menacing looks.
Anyway... we have a chicken transport cage (solid floor) of a pretty large size that fits in a corner of our coop, so I rigged it up with the chick's food and water and lodged a little roost from them across the bars. That was they could be in the coop, but be safe from attacks. Tonight, we tried to put that rig in the main coop, but our chicks fairly freaked out when they Sparra up on the main roost and kept trying to escape the cage and get away.
We watched and tried to comfort them for about 15 minutes, but it only abated slightly. (Sparra was making some noise as well, and pecked my head twice when I leaned near her.) We finally decided to take the rig out of there and move it to the shed for the night. I'm hoping maybe they can acclimate to the new cage before we try to put them with the adults again. They seemed okay in the shed, though they did distress peep a bit when we turned out the light and left. They looked to be getting ready to nap a bit later, though, and a bit after that I couldn't hear any noise. So I'm assuming they're all right!
Is this a good plan? Is there anything else we can do to make this work better? Our coop is good-sized, but it's not huge.
So our little chicks (Freckles, Gabby, and Penny) are six weeks old now, out-grown their tub in our living room, and we're working on moving them to the outside coop. We've been doing slow yard introductions (at a distance, at first), and then moved up to all our birds in the yard at once. We have two adult hens (Lady Cluck and Sparra). Lady Cluck doesn't seem to give one whit about the chicks (she is our top hen), but Sparra is a bit more incensed about it.
Yesterday, the chicks had their first close encounter with Sparra when she pulled a few feathers from Freckles. They scattered, and now they're giving her a wide berth, moving off whenever she comes close. She hasn't pecked them again, but she has given them menacing looks.
Anyway... we have a chicken transport cage (solid floor) of a pretty large size that fits in a corner of our coop, so I rigged it up with the chick's food and water and lodged a little roost from them across the bars. That was they could be in the coop, but be safe from attacks. Tonight, we tried to put that rig in the main coop, but our chicks fairly freaked out when they Sparra up on the main roost and kept trying to escape the cage and get away.
We watched and tried to comfort them for about 15 minutes, but it only abated slightly. (Sparra was making some noise as well, and pecked my head twice when I leaned near her.) We finally decided to take the rig out of there and move it to the shed for the night. I'm hoping maybe they can acclimate to the new cage before we try to put them with the adults again. They seemed okay in the shed, though they did distress peep a bit when we turned out the light and left. They looked to be getting ready to nap a bit later, though, and a bit after that I couldn't hear any noise. So I'm assuming they're all right!
Is this a good plan? Is there anything else we can do to make this work better? Our coop is good-sized, but it's not huge.
