1: Remember these are chickens, not people. Those cute little fluff balls that come running up to you looking for treats will absolutely peck new members to death if you don't handle the situation correctly.
2: Numbers count. It is much easier to introduce new birds if they outnumber the old ones. Adding eight juveniles to a flock of four adults is far easier than adding one juvenile to a flock of 12.
3: Know your breeds/genders. Some breeds tend to be aggressive, others overly passive. To take an extreme example, if you try to introduce a Salmon Faverolle to a flock of Aseels, you are just asking for trouble. Also, some roosters will completely reject any new cockerels. While it's important to be aware of the temperament of the breeds of chickens you have and are trying to introduce, it's equally important to understand that there will always be exceptions. We have a Buff Orpington hen who became so aggressive when we introduced a bunch of juveniles that we called that. "Fluffy's reign of terror." Here's a picture of the vicious thing:
4: Looking for troublemakers? Turn the pecking order upside down. When you introduce new chickens, the birds at the top of the old pecking order tend to not be threatened and are therefore less troublesome. I don't know whether the birds at the bottom of the pecking order see the new members as threats to their already precarious positions or whether they think, "Finally, someone I can pick on!" Either way, watch the bottom rung birds very carefully.
5: Slow but steady wins the race. However you choose to introduce new members, take your time. We usually begin at about six weeks of age. Depending on the weather, you might have to wait until eight weeks.
We put a medium-sized cage inside the chicken pen, and we add a feeder, a waterer, and a roost or two. Make sure that the big chickens cannot get at the little ones through the bars of the cage. To be on the safe side, we covered the cage with deer netting.
From six weeks to 10 weeks, the little ones spent the day in the chicken tractor and the night in the cage. From 10 to 12 weeks, they spent all of their time in the cage, so they were near the older birds 24/7. At 12 weeks, we added a door that was big enough for the little ones to get through but too small for the big ones.
When I first opened the door, I trapped all of the lower ranked chickens outside, so that the juveniles would be introduced to the highest ranked birds first. In our case, Dolly rules the roost. She was completely calm with them, and later on, she even began to look after them. I plan to do an entire blog entry on Dolly, because she's not the average bird (in fact, she started out as a rooster), so stay tuned for that.
When you finally have everyone together, monitor the situation closely, and carry a stick so that you can quickly chase off anyone who gets too aggressive. A little pecking is to be expected, but intervene at the first sign of mobbing or bullying. I suggest locking the little ones back in the cage after the first few experiments.
When you are finally prepared to leave them to their own devices, and you are sure that the juveniles know how to get in and out of the small door in the cage, you might try the "roost at night" method. For whatever reason, if you sneak in when it's dark put the new birds on the roost, the entire flock tends to be relatively calm when they all wake up together. Normal pecking order activities still take place, but I can tell you from experience that it really does make a difference.
At this point, you can just leave the cage door open in the pen. By the time the juveniles outgrow it, you have yourself an integrated flock.
No comments:
Post a Comment