Should I add an older hen to my flock?

[HHovance1998]

I recently bought two chickens to raise as pets and to harvest eggs from. What I hoped to be two hens turned out to be 1 hen and 1 cockerel they are only 5 weeks old but when maturity arrives, the cockerel will have to be given away. The hen is a Barred Rock and the cockerel is a Buff Orpington. I don't want the Barred Rock to be lonely so I am thinking of adding a 16-20 week old Buff Orpington hen to them now so that it won't be as stressful to separate them when my Roo has to leave. What do you think of adding an older (16-20 weeks) bird into a flock with young (5-7weeks) birds? taking into consideration that the flock is very small.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

5 weeks old is sometimes difficult to determine sex with real certainty. I'd wait on a new introduction for several reasons. First being you may still have two pullets and wont be certain until waiting. 5 week old birds are not large enough in my opinion to be with full grown birds unless were raised by a broody with those birds. Either case the result is the same, you should wait. Being only a potential flock of three there likely wouldn't be any problems but the size difference if there is undue pecking would lead to injury.

 

[HHovance1998]

Thanks for the input! Would waiting until the birds are closer to say, 12 weeks, be a better time to introduce an older bird? I just don't want the cockerel to start crowing before that time, in the case that it really is a cockerel. But judging by the size of his wattles and his comb color at such a young age, it's almost certainly a cockerel.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

My spring batch is 11 weeks now and one of the 6 cockerels just started trying to crow. That pathetic broken squeaky toy noise that is not loud at all and only once a day if he's lucky to get that out. Obviously it's different age for each cockerel to start but always low and infrequent almost funny attempts.

Yes, anything over 10 weeks is not a bad age to be introduced to larger hens. The size of flock being introduced to would determine if older age would be prudent. In the fall many people are down sizing for winter so picking up a point of lay pullet or two late August or into September is quit easy to do. At least in these parts of the country.