.... I contact the breeder and her response was that I was crazy to believe that hens and chicks will survive in a communal environment and even with rooster, she was mad. Now I still have this girls they did go to molt after their babies and now are starting to lay again. I believed that you could have everybody together, figure if my dad did it with fighting breeds why could i not do it with a more docile breed. Now what should I do ...
That's a sad story.
We have a mixed flock, all hatchery birds, various breeds, roosters mixed in ... different numbers of males at different times ... and we have let our broody hens raise chicks in with the flock. There has been some "curiosity" about the chicks, and a little guarding of food by the older birds, but so far no killings.
What we do when we notice a broody is let her sit on a nest (gathering any eggs she steals frequently because we sell eggs and a half-chick is an unpleasant surprise) until we think she is "serious." Then we move her to a nesting box on the floor of the regular coop, but in a small cage with the clutch of eggs we want her to hatch (all eggs set on the same day so they all hatch at about the same time). This keeps her organized on her own clutch of eggs. We have large dual nesting boxes, and can put a divider down the middle, so we have set up two hens simultaneously in the same small cage (again, all eggs put under the two hens at the same time so they all hatch at about the same time). When we have two hens in the same nest, they do co-parent the chicks, and sometimes one hen is the dominant parent by a lot. But since the hen communicates with the chicks when they are still in the shell, I would think they shouldn't be allowed to switch nests or mix up the incubating eggs ... we keep distinct clutches.
When all the chicks are hatched, we remove the cage but leave the nesting box on the floor of the coop. Then momma is responsible for introducing the chicks to the rest of the flock. Because our coop is 3 long rooms arranged in a line, we use the top room ... the one furthest from the pasture ... as the brooding room ... and it usually takes a while before momma takes the chicks into rooms 2 & 3 and even longer before she takes them all the way outside. This is her choice, but I think they do it this way because it helps the mommas keep track of the tiny chicks before the tiny chicks are fast enough to run away from anybody giving them a hard time.
You might want to figure out a way to help your brooding hens stay "organized" on their own clutch of eggs, and give her a little help protecting the chicks while the babies are still tiny and slow. We have a feeding station for the chicks which the big birds can't get into. Sometimes the chicks hide there. They come out when momma calls them. This likely saves their lives.
From what I've read, aggression could be hereditary. But as there are so many variables in your situation I wouldn't leap to any conclusions.
There are threads here on "old fashioned broody" hatching of chicks. I had a lot of questions when I started letting my hens hatch eggs, and people in that thread offered cool suggestions and support.
