Quick question

[KIWI CHICK]

Hi all. I have a quick question to ask.
If you had one 3 1/2 year old Shaver hen and wanted to introduce 4-5 more, would it be better to get pullets who are 26 or so weeks old, laying, and used to free-ranging or younger girls about 15 weeks old who are still in a run? I did think the younger ones wold be better so the existing girl would find it easier to be top-hen, but have over-thought it and confused myself!
Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[Egghead_Jr]

I don't think it really matters much. A shaver is a hardy hybrid that isn't easily pushed around. Where it may matter is if you want to be the one who introduces free ranging to the new birds. If your ranging area is smaller than their used to or if you plan to not free range at all then I'd go with the younger pullets so they adjust to the new location easier.

 

[chooks4life]

Hi all. I have a quick question to ask.
If you had one 3 1/2 year old Shaver hen and wanted to introduce 4-5 more, would it be better to get pullets who are 26 or so weeks old, laying, and used to free-ranging or younger girls about 15 weeks old who are still in a run? I did think the younger ones wold be better so the existing girl would find it easier to be top-hen, but have over-thought it and confused myself!
Thanks for your thoughts!

Since they're all individuals, it can be impossible to determine the best matches, and you will only really know when you've introduced them. As a general rule you're right in thinking the younger ones with less life experience might be the better bets, but you'd probably be better off getting much younger birds than her.

Is the Shaver hen a pet, with no real experience with other birds? If so, she will be highly unlikely to remain dominant for long even if her age gives her an edge to begin with. Likewise if she has something wrong with her.

If you bred her, however, to gain company for her, her own chicks would continue to show her extra deference even as adults in most cases and she'd have a happier family flock than if you introduce unfamiliar adults. If you can't have a rooster where you are, some people will let you 'board' your hen with them and their rooster/s for a while (three weeks should ensure she is 'pregnant') and then you can bring her home to let her sit a clutch... IF she broods, that is.

The pullets that are laying would fight her because they are already in breeding condition and the advent of that state in both genders is also the advent of them experiencing an instinctive drive to challenge authority and see if they can improve their lot in life by displacing/subjugating the current resident dominants of their genders. (As I'm fairly sure you know, sorry for being so long winded, I'm trying to be comprehensive enough to be helpful though I don't know how much you do or don't know already).

Your hen would have to fight every one of the new layers to establish dominance and if she's been raised alone, or with non-competitors, she will likely fail and may end up an outsider, ostracized. Birds of a feather flock together generally speaking and even week old chicks will associate with their own breed rather than mix freely with others. So she will probably be the outsider anyway, even in a best case scenario, if you get a new group in that were raised together or are of the same breed.

It's very unlikely your girl will remain dominant, so it may be best to have a back up plan for how you will deal with it if she becomes bullied or completely rejected by the others. A rooster can be a good backup plan. With a different focus (breeding) hens who would otherwise fight nonstop can redirect their energies to something more positive. Some hens habitually scrap with one another until a rooster is introduced.

It's not his job to break up fights, as some think, as this does not sort out the hen's pecking order, it merely postpones and escalates their social disagreement. Just his presence will settle them down, normally; him leaping into the middle of every fight and attacking them is not only abnormal and harmful, but severely counterproductive. If their fights are broken up all the time, they are not resolved, and deaths are likely to occur in future, or irreparable breaches in the social order, as the natural conclusion was never allowed to eventuate. A rooster's social order, and a hen's social order, naturally only includes their own gender; it's unnatural for them to interfere in the other gender's hierarchy disputes. There is naturally a top hen as well as a top rooster, and slightly less dominant birds of both genders all the way down the ladder. Some birds, generally males, are keen to jump into any and every fight, which just makes the eventual outcome more violent than it was going to be, so rehoming or culling such troublemakers is better than keeping them.

It may be better to not get a pre-established flock, as a group of hens will be, and just get singles from different ages and backgrounds, and let them work out their own flock status and hierarchy, as this lessens the chances of gang-bashing of any individual occurring. It does heighten the chances of bringing in more diseases if you get them from different places, but plenty of breeders maintain a few breeds, not just one, on the same property. Lonely birds in a new environment are far more likely to make a new flock of their own.

It's no use to pick the least dominant or ostracized hens from the places you get them though because in the absence of their previous dominant, many roosters and hens who looked peaceful and nonaggressive in their old flock can reveal a nasty side of them which kept them under subjugation in their last social circumstance, but which is free to be acted upon in the absence of their old boss. If you just pick birds that are more friendly to you is probably a better bet for a happier flock as you need them to trust you too, so you can treat them as necessary. Friendly birds aren't often excessively violent, but antisocial ones generally are more likely to be excessively aggressive and neurotic.

If you have a separate run and coop/roosting place set up, just in case things escalate and you need to separate one or a few birds, this is a good strategy which gives you some insurance against a terrible situation if things go to the worst case scenario. It will also help if any of your hens are ever injured or sick or broody or whatever.

I would not introduce the hens directly, but would keep them separate for at least a week, and possibly a month if your hen has been raised isolated, as they will be carrying things she's never been exposed to which could kill her. The week is a minimum time, generally speaking, for allowing new birds and old birds to meet and see one another with a cage between them so they can adjust and get to know one anther without fighting.

Disease quarantine's a good idea. It would really suck to get company for your older hen only to have that company bring the disease that kills her.

Never, ever buy sick poultry if you can see anything amiss, unless you're confident of your ability to treat them and not lose your own stock to the sickness, which also requires identifying the illness present, but some are invisible or asymptomatic.

I would work on building my resident's immunity before I brought more in, if I were you, and keep all birds on an immune-boosting diet during the first few weeks of meeting. Raw, fresh garlic is one such immune booster and it's antiviral, antimicrobial, antiparasitic, antifungal, antibiotic, and many other great things. Rosemary and sage are also anti-disease but can be strong herbs to use on birds that have never had herbs added to their diets before. It's worth looking into though. Unpasteurized apple cider vinegar with the 'mother' added to their water will also help control how much in terms of pathogens are transmitted from sharing the water, as well as help their general health.

You should probably assume your new birds are bringing in a strain of cocci your hen has not encountered, or the usual strain/s in larger dosage or slightly different variation, so best to treat accordingly, before you see any symptoms. If there is raw garlic in their food regularly you won't have them get sick and won't lose any to cocci. There's a few simple herbs and spices you can add to their feeds which will enhance their health and raise their immune response against hostiles by making their organism hostile to the diseases and parasites.

I would also buy hydrated agricultural lime and sprinkle it over all ground they will be walking on, and the ground around that too, wherever their feces end up even if you walked it there on your shoes, and this will kill parasite eggs and many pathogens in the soil as well as help break down manure and make the soil healthier in general. It won't hurt them, as it's edible for livestock, and even birds that have gotten it in their eyes have not shown any discomfort. It could be an issue if you make clouds of it in an enclosed environment and they are forced to breathe it though, but I used it regularly throughout my cages etc and of course being chickens they scratched it up and I never had respiratory diseases or any issues from such mild respiratory exposure.

I would watch the birds you get and see how they deal with others in their flock, before you get them. I wouldn't waste my time on the hen who has to peck every subordinate bird as she passes it, and I wouldn't waste time on any hen who chases subordinates to bully them further; likewise with any hen who directly approaches subordinates to reinforce the pecking order when they have done nothing to challenge her status. Also, getting in freerange birds and caging them permanently can lead to outbreaks of vicious frustrated behavior, so if you plan to keep them caged, best to get birds that are used to it. If you plan to freerange them, it doesn't matter if they're from cages or freerange.

Normally the pecking order is reinforced by eye and body language, not actual harm. They have a lot of body language specialized at showing submission or threats from a distance; it's not like they need to fight to see who submits to whom, a fight is what occurs normally once two birds have shown one another they both expect the other to submit to them. Once they've settled into their roles, violence is no longer necessary between birds of differing social statuses, even with roosters, unless the subordinate directly challenges the dominant. Normally subordinates will move out of the way and exercise placating courtesies and deference to the dominants which defuses any potential aggression --- as long as the dominant is not a bully.

Nothing placates a bully, and they're a total waste of time, energy, resources, and life. They stress the other animals and stress lowers production as well as impacts on their immune systems, and they breed more of the same mentality on, as just surviving confirms the behavior of the individual as being good instincts/habits/traits to pass on, as it 'worked' for them so it should work for their offspring. Instincts are malleable and must adjust to the environment, which they do during each individual's lifetime, so future offspring can adapt to their environs as necessary. If excessive violence is not punished, but is allowed or worse rewarded, you only breed more of the same. In this case human intervention and husbandry methods are to blame, giving the equivalent of imbalanced psychopaths free reign to enact their warped behavioral traits on the general population and breeding them instead of culling them out, as would occur in nature with socially detrimental individuals who cannot maintain positive social interactions within their family groups.

These negative traits are always more common in high-production factory-farmed birds, often in those from mass-hatcheries too, really just any place that practices over-restriction of high populations with not enough stimuli and no culling for harmful traits. When they are selected to be bred based on production statistics alone, and a hen who pecks out the eyes of all her flockmates is kept because she lays an extra egg a year, they can produce some seriously socially maladjusted and malevolent individuals who are incapable of sustaining healthy interactions.

If possible I wold buy from a 'backyard' breeder who knows what they're doing, who doesn't tolerate cannibalism or excessive violence or human aggression, and I wouldn't buy the highest production hybrids etc. But this all depends on what you want them for, and for how long.

You may get 'good enough' ones but I've never seen truly great ones as compared to other breeds and mongrels. 3 years is positively geriatric for those high production hens, they're constantly physically compelled to overproduction at the expense of their own health and just the constant genetic demand on them compels them to be rather unsociable as they can never meet their own needs no matter how much they eat. Their health suffers from this and there's nothing you can really do about it.

Best wishes with your growing flock.

 

[KIWI CHICK]

Thanks for your thoughts.
I was actually asking the question on behalf of someone else who would like to get some pullets from me, and was wondering which of my girls would be most suitable for her. I am the "backyard breeder' in that I get the chicks as day olds from the hatchery and raise them..
It sounds as if the best match would be either the younger girls, or a combination of younger and 29 week old girls so they are all strangers.
Thanks for your help!