I have 24 twelve week old chickens, and then have 4 younger ones (6 weeks old) in the brooder. I want to turn the younger ones loose in the coop, but I'm having problems. I put the young ones in a cage inside coop run last Sunday so they could get used to each other. But yesterday, I tried to turn them loose with the other chickens. It was not good! They were all getting picked on by the older ones. Then one of the larger roosters jumped my little cuckoo marans, attacking viciously! I ran in grabbed the baby and put the little ones back in the cage. I was thinking of getting rid of this rooster, because he seems to be aggressive and I prefer to keep my other Ameraucana rooster which is much gentler anyways. So today I advertised the rooster for sale and have a lady coming to pick him up this evening. I wonder if it will be safe to let the little ones loose after he's gone, or will they still get picked at? How old do they need to be to mix them in with the other chickens? Anything else I need to do to get them ready?
they will still probably get picked on for a little while....the bigger chickens are just tryin to show them whos boss....
Try putting them in the coop with the older chickens in a seperate pen inside of the coop for another week. Make sure that the other chickens can see the newbies. My experience with this was that my new chickens were picked on a little, but not much at all. They stayed segregated for a while, but eventually will integrate in. Mine were the exact same ages when I did this (12 wks and 6 wks). We also put them in the cage for an additional week at night, so that we could monitor the interaction in the day, but didn't want to risk the night.