Last year, after taking almost a year to settle into our new digs, we finally got a small flock of chickens. We’d missed our girls (and their eggs!) back in Montana and we were thrilled to have a great spot for a {sub}urban chicken yard. (Check out the back posts on this blog for more details). I must admit, though, that I was a bit nervous back in the Spring about introducing our newbies to the hens we acquired last year. Chickens can be brutal and if one is pecked so hard that blood is drawn, those ladies will go cannibalistic and actually kill the bleeding bird.
Thankfully, none of this happened! One key factor was that we selected friendly breeds. Our older girls are a Buff Orphington and Wyandottes. Our newbies are sweet Easter Eggers and Rhode Island Reds. The second factor is that we slowly introduced the new chickens to the older ones by keeping the newbies in cages outside of the chicken yard (but close by) so that the older ones could check them out from a distance. We did this for about two days for brief periods of time. The final step was releasing the younger girls into the chicken yard at dusk. Chickens are less likely to be aggressive at dusk and our older gals were no exception (much to my relief). Also, they modeled for the younger ones the proper way to enter the coop. And, yes, there was some squawking and light pecking but nothing too dramatic. After a few days, they all figured out the new “pecking order” and have gotten along harmoniously since!
preparing for the grand introduction at dusk
it took the new girls a while to go in that night, but they eventually did
Filed under: homestead happenings, {sub}urban farm Tagged: integrating chicken flocks, intorducing new chickens to a flock
