Will a roo "fight" newly introduced hens?

[Amy's Animals]

I have two seperate coops that connect w/ a little "chicken" door. One coop is larger and contains only 3 chickens, 1 layer hen and a silkie pair. The second, much smaller, contains 4 young layer hens. If I were to open up the little door and let them together, which would make many things a lot easier for me, would the silkie roo "attack" the "new" hens????

 

[chookchick]

Are the layer hens full grown?--if so there should not be much of a problem. It sounds like they have been visible to each other for a while--a few weeks is good. I would be more concerned about the other hens, rather than the roo, but if the roo sees them as a security threat he might go after them. All you can do is put them together and keep a close eye on them. If no blood is shed, that is a good sign.

 

[Amy's Animals]

The layers are just 12 weeks old but they've been able to see each other through the wire for about 1-2 months. The roo hasn't shown any signs of threating since I first put them there. Yes, I'm taking the other hen out (the other one is brooding and safely locked up by herself) because she is is rather, politely saying, bossy. She likes to think she is the Queen of The Barnyard, all animals run from her in fear (including horses, cows, and cats: no lie) When they come too close to take a sniff at her, which they only do once, they leave w/ a sore nose, from then on, they run from her. Thats why I'm seperating her from my babies.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The way I understand this is that you want to put a grown mature silkie rooster with 4 pullets, 12 weeks old. Your other two hens are not going to be mixed in right now. It's hard to tell what chickens will do in these situations. The age of your pullets makes it even harder to predict. I'm not going to give you any clear answers.

They may or may not be too young to sexually attract him. If he is sexually attracted to them, he will most likely start mating them to show dominance and accept them into his flock. They are young to be mated and may not know what is going on. They may or may not be upset by this. I don't think it will harm the pullets and may make your life easier later if he accepts them as part of his flock now.

If he is not sexually attracted to them, he may be a good rooster and accept them as his flock and take good care of them. Or he may see them as a threat and try to harm them.

Since it is a lone rooster, I would try it now, but definitely monitor the situation to see if you need to interfere. If there were hens in the group, I'd say wait a few weeks. But at some point you are going to want to integrate the mama and her chicks with this flock, whether you let mama raise them with the flock or not. There will be pecking order issues among the hens at that time. I personally think there are fewer risks with mama raising the chicks with the flock, but there are risks both ways. A good rooster will keep these from getting too vicious. I don't know if you have a good rooster. And you may want to reintegrate the bossy hen at some point. The larger and better bonded the flock is when you do that the more likely it will work.

I can't give you any guarantees with any of this. You are dealing with living animals so the individual personalities come into play. You are trying to mix adolescents with adults. The hormonal balance is or will soon be changing. It is tough being a godmother. Good luck!

 

[australorpchick]

My roo doesn't bother any pullets until they've laid their first egg. I've heard of other roos doing this too.