Will our chickens move in with the neighbors?

[handmommy]

Hi, new here. We have 7 day old chicks and are mentally preparing for the outside move. My husband is building our coop and will have a fenced in area attached to it. But our chickens will be free range - as are our neighbors. Our neighbors chickens and guinea hens (they have about 30) basically live in our yard and woods during the day and head home to roost at night. Now, will our chickens just flock up with theirs? Can we keep them separate? And will they possibly peck ours to death? And how can we prevent any of this from happening? I've had suggestions along the way - to introduce them at night and slowly, to keep ours in their fenced in area for at least 2 weeks so they know it's home, etc. Any other advice would be wonderful!! Thanks!

 

[chicmom]

What you have to do at first, is lock them in the coop and run for approximately two weeks. This will help them establish the feeling that this coop is their home. If you run isn't secure enough, and you think they could escape, then you should lock them in the coop, if it's roomy enough.

Your chickens will bond to eachother and also to their coop. They will flock together, but there's always a chance that, after they get used to everything, they'll wander over and mingle with the neighbor's chickens, but they will most likely come home each night to roost.

The thing is, you want them to lay eggs in your coop, not theirs, so it's important, that, when they get close to laying age, that you lock them up again, so they can establish where to lay their eggs.

The problem is, if the neighbor's chickens are always on your property, then they'll look at your chickens like they are invading their space, and your chickens may get attacked, so it's pretty important to keep them separated while they're babies, because an adult chicken can kill a smaller one.

I'm not so sure I would like my neighbors flock all over my yard. Where I live, it's pretty isolated, so I don't worry about that.....I wouldn't mind an occasional chicken visiting me from the neighbor, but I don't think I'd like the neighbor's entire flock in my yard.....They should be more respectful to you in that respect, I believe.

Take care and just take one day at a time and see what happens,
Sharon

 

[handmommy]

Thank you Sharon! You know, it has never bothered me before to have the neighbor's flock in our yard - we've always enjoyed them. But now that we have our own, I'm sort of irritated because I have to consider how it's going to affect our little ones. The guineas I'm totally OK with because they eat our woodticks. But they sure 'yell' at us when we go outside. They all definitely think they were there first and it's their yard. So this may pose a problem with our chicks. I guess I'll just follow everyone's suggestions and keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best. I'm just so darn attached to ours already that I'll be heartbroken if something happens to them or if they move away! (When we first considered this, I almost laughed at the idea thinking the neigbhors would just end up responsible for more chickens!) Thanks again.