Scared hen

[Cstyles1983]

I think I took too long to introduce younger chickens to my older chickens and rooster. One of the chickens is super scared and won't come out of the chicken coop. I also found her with blood on her comb and I have since separated the rooster from her and the others but she's still scared. In the photo i had to take her out. any pointers?

 

[Mrs. K]

Time will help.

Also often times people put pullets into a strange coop with older birds, both stressful situations. It can be of a real help to lock the old girls out of the coop/run, and lock the young ones in. This lets them explore the place without being chased. Do that for two or three days, then add equal number of old birds minus one or two to the coop/run, leaving the others outside. There will be a dust up, but one on one shouldn’t last long, next day let the all outside and you should be golden.

Make sure you have multiple feed bowls all around your run placed so that a bird eating at one, can’t be seen by a bird eating at another.

Clutter, space also help. Pin less peepers help in small flocks with really mean birds.

 

[Cstyles1983]

Time will help.

Also often times people put pullets into a strange coop with older birds, both stressful situations. It can be of a real help to lock the old girls out of the coop/run, and lock the young ones in. This lets them explore the place without being chased. Do that for two or three days, then add equal number of old birds minus one or two to the coop/run, leaving the others outside. There will be a dust up, but one on one shouldn’t last long, next day let the all outside and you should be golden.

Make sure you have multiple feed bowls all around your run placed so that a bird eating at one, can’t be seen by a bird eating at another.

Clutter, space also help. Pin less peepers help in small flocks with really mean birds.

Thanks a lot for the advice. Forgot about the peepers!

 

[SamLockwood]

There's a lot of different schools of thought on how to integrate them. I prefer to start with "look, don't touch" earlier than some, but it's not an absolute rule. The only thing that's absolute is not to just dump new birds into the flock overnight and expect there to be no violence.

There really isn't such a thing as "seamless integration." Adding new birds to a flock always shakes up the pecking order, and chickens have very limited communications skills and zero patience.