Thank you for your advice. I will certainly monitor them when the time is right. My six Silkies are currently 2 weeks old. So I have a little time. I'm just worried about the introduction time, and how to do introduce them. I'm new to chickens so I'm still learning the ropes.
I know what you mean about starting out. I grew up on a farm with business flocks and that's different from a backyard where the chickens might be family pets. I made mistakes for my situation where it would not have been a problem for someone else with a different flock, space/area, environment, etc. I have a small yard and zoning doesn't permit more than 5 hens and no roos -- and that's only if the neighbors don't complain and chicken housing meets ordinances! You can imagine my embarrassment in our quiet cul-de-sac when I had dual purpose birds that layed every day and hollered egg songs for an hour before and after laying their egg! In 5 years of backyarding we've cycled through 13 chickens to get down to the 4 compatible birds we have now. Some of our dual purpose were nice to their flockmates while they were young but as the dual purpose aged they became more aggressive and bullied smaller or timid breeds. I had no problem with young birds but many by one to 3 yrs old had developed nasty habits or dispositions.
Recently I lucked out at having a timid Blue Wheaten Ameraucana (my avatar) who was added to the flock and remained at the bottom of the pecking order with the Silkies even though she is twice their size. We adore her for being submissive to the gentles so we kept her. After re-homing or losing several birds we were down to just the 2 older Silkies and one Ameraucana. With my unpleasant experience cycling through so many chickens -- and after extensive research of lightweight non-combative reputations of breeds -- we decided to experiment with adding a lightweight Breda to the mix - we needed eggs of a normal size and the Silkies are good layers but lay smaller eggs and the Ameraucana is not a production layer. Several owners of Bredas were kind to walk me thru the pros and cons of Breda and we've been pleasantly surprised with having her in the flock. Because our two Silkie hens are the oldest birds in the flock she has been submissive to the oldest Silkie. Now that our Silkies are the oldest birds they "rule the roost." It wasn't always so but over the years the Silkies have moved up in flock status -- the Ameraucana and the Breda were added to the mix at a much later date. The Ameraucana continues to be bottom on the pecking order but she is so accustomed to dodging the others and remains non-retaliatory to challenges that she seems acclimated to her station -- occasionally she will push to the front of the line during treats time but she gets no more aggressive than that.
IMO and IMO only -- the reason our Silkies are at the top of the pecking order is that they have been established in the yard for 5 years and our two LFs were added at later dates -- plus our two LF breeds are smaller breeds and have a general reputation for non-combativeness. I've had RIR, BRs, Doms, NHR, different Leghorn varieties, and Marans and have loved them and made pets of them but after having these nice dual purpose breeds around Silkies with unfortunate results, I will not mix them again. Wyans and BOs are two more nice breeds that I feel are too big and assertive to add to my small gentles flock. I would love to try Bielefelders, Langshans, Jersey Giants, Welsummers, and so many more interesting or rare breeds but won't tempt fate around the Silkies.
