Single hen

[HENthusiastic]

Hiya.

I'm thinking of plans to adapt the garden to fit in more chooks . Im thinking about possibly having some girls live in an eglu and run (possibly with extended area built for them). If I did keep two separate flocks, would they be okay ranging together, if I supervised and got them used to it slowly? They would all be able to see each other from their respective runs the rest of the time.

 

Does anybody else have two separate runs of chickens? How does it work for you?

[Egluntyne]

I did have for a long time.

 

When they started free ranging together, once the initial argy bargying had died down, it got quite tricky to get them to go into the 'correct' Eglu. They wanted to bunk up together. That was when I gave up and merged the flocks.

[HENthusiastic]

Why did you start off with separate flocks then? Was it because you didn't think they had enough space to all go in together?

 

I notice youve got FOUR eglus and a cube! Whats your set up now?

[Egluntyne]

I had my original 4 Omlet girls, then I took 4 older Omlet girls plus their Eglu off someone who had a change of circumstances and could no longer keep them. I kept them apart for quite a while as the 2nd lot of older girls were very nasty to my girls. Keeping them in view of eachother for a time made the eventual merging very easy.

 

I have 4 Eglus, but the hens I have at the mo are all in the cube. Their choice...I did offer an Eglu too, but they were having none of it!

 

2 of my eglus are out on loan at the mo to Omleteers who have rescued ex-batts.

[Janty]

I had a cube with my original girls in and another cube with my ex-batts in. I then had an eglu with the bantams in. The original girls used to be the only ones allowed out and they would free range around the others.

 

I was cleaning the eglu out one week and the bantams escaped. All went well and so I started letting the two lots out together. Then I tried the ex-batts out with the others and there were no serious problems (I had had them in full view of the others for 2 months) so I started letting them all out together.

 

Then the bantams took over the cube and moved in with the big girls which was annoying as I only bought the eglu as the bantams and big girls were not mixing very well.

 

 

Now I have between 12 & 17 chickens choosing to pile into one cube each night whilst the other cube has a handful of girls in there, if any.

 

The eglus were lying empty so I put the chicks in one. Most of the chicks have gone off to new homes but we still have seven left.

 

[HENthusiastic]

Sounds like they all fairly much make their own decisions then eh? And we think we are the ones in charge of them . I think we are veering towards building an extension to our current walk in run, now, rather than making a new separate one. That way, they could all live in the wooden house in one big run, and we would still have the eglu free for introductions, sick bay etc. It was just looking like it might have been a bit easier to build a second coop, but I guess its also more hassle in terms of checking and feeding food and water stations and poo picking and mucking out two houses. I hadn't thought of that before.