4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[mictogirl]

Hi All.

 

We're in the process of building our shed conversion walk in run and are going to attach our current ark (with underneath run) to the outside of it.

 

When planning, I said to my hubby 'We need to leave enough space on the chicken area down one side of the run for an extra small house / run for when we get new chooks and have to do introductions'. I'm not sure what we'll use when the time comes - I'm hoping to hire an Eglu off someone so I can show him how great they are

 

Anyway, he said it wasn't necessary - he realises we need to keep the old and new girls seperate for a while, but where they can see each other etc, but thinks we can just seperate the ark from the run and have one set of girls in each.

 

Can anyone tell me whether this would actually work? I can't see it somehow - if we had the new girls (most likely freaked out ex-batts) in the ark to start with, surely the older girls would be really annoyed they couldn't get back in their old house to sleep (Hubby reckons they would be fine sleeping on perches / nest boxes in the run )??? I can't imagine it working the other way around either - if the old girls were kept in the ark and small run underneath, they would not be happy at the sudden lack of space and the new girls would freak out even more at having so much space in the run and nowhere dark and cosy to sleep (though the run will be covered).

 

I don't think it would work at all, but can anyone give me some good reasons / their own bad experiences to tell him why we would definitely need a second temporary house and run? He won't just take my word for it of course

 

Thanks in advance!

Laura.

[Nature Chick]

Hi there

We had a similar dilemma when introducing our single old hen and our two new girls.

It would have been much easier to keep them shut in the run and living in the eglu and having Red free-range around them living in the old wooden house. I thought that she would be so cross to have been booted out of the eglu I decided to keep her in the run with the wooden house and eglu in a fenced pen. This was the best solution however it meant that Red was shut in (not something she is that used to) and the new girls were free-ranging around her. After a week the screaming stopped and after 3 they are now all friends - we just need to move the babies into the eglu at night now so that we can get rid of the old house.

I would have thought that you would need something as if your existing hens are used to sleeping in a box they might feel a bit agoraphobic left on a perch in the run!

 

Good luck

[Olly]

I'm not sure I understand your set-up. You definitely need two runs for during the day, but you could possibly cope with one 'house' for the night-time.

 

This however means you have to be prepared to pick up one set of hens (the one without an ark!) at night, and put them in with the other, hopefully sleepy, hens overnight and then get up again in the morning to let them out before serious pecking begins. It gets light quite early now, so that could mean getting up quite early! I did this successfully introducing one hen to my existing four, but it was winter so it got dark early and didn't get light till quite late, I wouldn't fancy doing it in the summer. If you can't do that, then you'll need separate housing for each set.

 

You could improvise though - I wasn't getting home before dark, so Pipi used to roost in a cat-carrier, and then I'd pop her into the Cube when I got home. She seemed fine in there, as long as it's dry and dark they probably aren't too bothered.

[mictogirl]

Thanks for the replies. I definitely think we need another house of some sort and will take your comments about pecking if sleeping in the same house to my hubby! I don't know whether it'll be summer or winter when we get more chooks (though I'd prefer summer) and it's definitely something to take into consideration.

 

We could probably get away with putting some sort of house for sleeping in into the run itself for the older girls to get used to and have the newbies in the ark. I probably didn't explain the set up very well - we currently have just an ark which is the type with a run underneath and a ladder leading up to the roosting bars / nestbox - this one in fact!:

 

http://www.forshamcottagearks.com/poultry-housing/cat-prod-boughton-chicken-housing.htm

 

- all enclosed with Omlet netting to let the girls have a little more space. The plan is to attach this ark to the new run so they can come and go between them, but hubby says it'll be easy enough to block off the entrance between the 2 areas for intros. I was just worried about whichever set of chooks would be in the run area, where would they sleep?

 

Any ideas what I could use temporarily for a hen house? I guess so long as it has sides, a roof and some roosting bars they'll be happy right??

 

Thanks again.

[abwsco]

We've done three lots of intros using a rabbit hutch which we put in the walk in run. We also split the walk in run in two using some dog run panels. However, we quickly took these out as the older ones were trying to get into the new ones and we didn't wnat any fatalities, so we let our oldies out to free range all day.

 

Our latest newbies which we got at the end of January have only just been allowed to sleep in the coop without getting attacked by some of the older ones (mainly my black rock ) for just over a week even though they've been mixing together all day since February.