I've only been doing this a short while but I have my original 6 chickens seperated from the 14 I raised from day olds. The 14 chicks stayed in the house until recently and DH and I are SOOOOOOOOO happy to have them out in the chicken coop.
When we built the chicken house the original 6 went from our living room to the chicken house. Then the 14 Silkies arrived and things got really messy. When the Silkies were old enough to go outside I moved the original 6 into a screen house within the chicken yard, with the Compu-Coop, and put the Silkies into the chicken house.
The chicken house is 8X10 with double doors at the front. I can divide that space into 2 compartments if I need to, 2 8X5's. And in April I expect I will need to.
There are 27 new chicks on order for late April arrival. The chicken house has 2 suspended heat lamps and I can add 1 more to the electrical load. I want to put the new chicks into the chicken house from the get go and have a frame to keep them under the heat lamps.
The current occupants of the chicken house will move into another screen house with another Compu-Coop for nighttime shelter. Those little things are soooooooooo handy! There is yet 1 more screen house (total of 3) but before I can put it up I'll have to expand the chicken yard!
Time to go shut the chickens up for the night.
Georgia
--- On Sat, 1/30/10, Mona <circa63@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Mona <circa63@gmail.com>
Subject: [CHICKENS-101] Introducing new chickens
To: CHICKENS-101@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, January 30, 2010, 1:28 PM
Hello all, I know this has been gone over plenty of times but I can't seem to find a solution to my particular issue so here goes. Don't know of y'all remember, I got myself 5 buff orp chicks about 15 weeks ago from a lady that ordered from Ideal. They are big beautiful girls just like you all told me they would be. The prob is they are STILL in my kitchen!! I lost 2 of the babies at 11 weeks when I tried to integrate them into the flock - I had 3 roos at that time and 2 of them ganged up on them and pecked them to death in the head! Not a pretty sight, my daughters were quite traumatized. I gave away those 2 roosters, so now I'm down to 1 roo and 4 hens (1 bantam, 2 white leghorns, 1 something that lays brown eggs and has fluffy cheeks LOL). I waited a week or so to try it again after I re-homed the offending roos and the other roo charges them full-tilt and won't let them anywhere near the other hens, food or water when they are out in the yard all together. I whacked him but good with the broom a few times thinking he would leave them alone but he's a brat. He has charged my daughter a couple of times too and she kicked him and he stopped (she's 9). So long story short, the babies are 15 weeks old and still in the kitchen and my coop is too small for me to try putting another cage or something into to do it that way for a few days. What I did when I put the leghorns out there was to put them in a large dog crate next to the run for 2 days so they could see each other & get to know each other without harm & that worked well, there was very little squabbling & no blood drawn when I put them together on the 3rd day, they've been fine since. I would have to wait till mid-spring to do that again before the temps got warm enough to do that safely. I've read to put all them in a new coop but I don't have anything else to put them into so that won't work. Anything I haven't thought of yet? The part that get's me the most is that I've read that roo's usually protect new girls & he's the one who's attacking them! The other hens look like they could care less and just ignore the new girls. UGH. This is a very frustrating not to mention smelly problem for me LOL! On the upside, the new girls are VERY friendly and love attention, they even jump up and sit on our arms etc! Well since this is my first post in a long while, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season & a happy new year!
Thanks!
Mona
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