What will get along with my adult hens

[jamieneenah]

HI;

I have 5 hens, about 5 to 6 months old that are laying. I'd like to be able to add a few more hens, either some more adults now, or add in some of my young baby hens.

I have tried multiple times to put young (1-3 week) old females into the cage with my laying hens. However, every time I do, The layers start to chase and peck at the baby. I then take the baby out because I am afraid they will kill her.

The adult laying hens are very gentle with people, they don't peck, you can hold them, etc.

How can I introduce new birds into my hen coop? Is there behavior of going after the baby normal? What can I do about it so I am not stuck with only 5 hens forever?

Thanks
Jamie

 

[enola]

They will kill a young chick.

You can try raising some chicks until they are 4 or so months old and then add them to your flock. They need to be large enough to be fast enough to get away from your older hens until the pecking order is established after adding new birds to the flock.

And no matter what age chicken you try to add to the flock, there must be room for the newly added chickens to be able to get away from the older hens.

 

[fernandez0067]

This behavior is definitley normal. You have to wait until the baby chicks are around the same size as the laying hens.

seperate the new chickens from the old with chicken wire for a week or so, they need to get used to eachother and things should settle down.

Then they should be ok to integrate

 

[berkeleysprings]

hens are like 2 roosters in the same pen and will fight no matter big or small the birde being brought in its like a cock fight make sure u ad the birds at night and they will wake up together and less likely to fihght as much ... go right befor the sun comes up ... sorry about the spelling lol