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

[AJH101]

Within days of our Eglu and 2 hens arriving my OH wanted a couple more!

 

I have heard of a couple of methods of introducing hens into an established coop:

 

1. Allow the 'old' hens to range and put the newbies into the Eglu run for the day. After seeing each other there is apparently little squabbling when they are mixed.

 

2. Intrduce the new hens into the Eglu at night. After a night together there should be little squabbling.

 

What do you think? Do any of you use other methods?

 

Thanks

[Cooks]

Hi,

I went down the route of keeping them seperate (older girls in cube and walk in run and younger girls in eglu with run) and then freeranging with supervision, then I moved the newbies across in with the olders girls cube when they were asleep and I woke up really early and moved them back again to their own eglu for a week and then they slept in together and woke up together all in all it took about 3 weeks I think. but can take much longer and will depend on the age of the birds you are introducing to your flock.

 

ie I have just got two new girls again but they are 12 weeks old, so will stay seperate for a lot lot longer to allow them to get bigger and mature enough to be able to defend themselves against the bigger girls. I dont mind how long this takes, I will follow their lead.

 

They live in a seperate part on my walk in run so I know they are all safe. (a picture is in the eglu/cubes section)

[Olly]

Take a look at thiswhich is in the FAQs - it sets out the tried and tested methods of introduction.

 

Don't rush it - as your girls are quite young still it may be easier, but do keep an eye out because bullying can become severe quite quickly and they can inflict serious damage on each other.

[eggalp]

It took ages for our chickens to accept eachother!

 

We had the older two ranging around the new two for just over a week, then we let them all out together. There was a fair bit of squabbling and me and hubby both took turns to sit outside with the hosepipe for when things got too rough.

 

We started putting the little ones in with the others after dark after about six weeks but there was alot of fighting when we let them out in the morning. After some great advice from others on here we split both the 2 new ones and 2 older ones and put one of each into each run, and everyday did a change round i.e 'divide and conquer'.

 

This worked really well and eventually they were all living together during the day. There were still problems at night when the older ones wouldn't let the little ones into the eglu to sleep so each night we had to take them out and put them back into the rabbit hutch to sleep. This carried on for over a week so we took the main bully out and kept her on her own for a few days to teach her some manners!! when we put her back with the others it was much better.

 

All in all it took about 13 weeks for them to fully live together day and night. Some people would probably say i was too soft and dragged it out for too long. Looking back now, i think they were probably right but it was my first introduction and i was suprised how mean they could be to any newcomers. I hated seeing th pecking and bullying.

 

I hope this doesn't put you off, its not meant to!! - it just might be more difficult than you think, it certainly was for us! It was well worth it though, now they are all the best of friends, Good Luck