chickennewbie38
Hatching
Hello there. As you can see by my username, we are chicken newbies and would like some advice. We acquired our first chickens several months ago, an Americauna, a Buff Orpington, Easter Egger, and Production Red. The Buff and Red have since passed mysteriously and the Easter Egger had a mite problem and we are trying to nurse her back to health. Anyhow, a few weeks ago we picked up four chicks to replenish: A Cochin, a Silkie, another Americauna, and a Rhode Island Red. They had all been living in the same wide tote, but somewhere along the line I noticed the others were pecking at a bald spot on the Red's backside. So I removed her and put her in a different tote. Sometime later I observed the Silkie bullying the Americauna by almost tearing out some of her tail feathers, so the Silkie found a new home in a different tote. That left the Americauna and Cochin in the same tote, and I didn't observe any problems with them until today when the Cochin tried to tear out some of Americauna's tail feathers. So all four chicks have their own totes at the moment. We're working on putting together a new small coop we got for them, but now I'm wondering if they'll even get along when we put them all in it. We don't even know if the Cochin and Silkie are hens since they were straight run. And they're not big enough to put in the main coop with the adult-ish Americauna as we're apprehensive she may peck them to death. Am I am just being overprotective/paranoid over all this, and should I just let them figure it all out(the four chicks that is, not the big girl yet)?