What makes a chicken coop easy to live with?

[sandyelladusty]

Since adopting our 3 ex-bats last September we are totally smitten and as we have room for one more in the Eglu would like to introduce another. As our 3 girls, Sandy Ella and Dusty have bonded happily together, not siure how kindly they would take to another hen.

Any advice much appreciated.

[Cooks]

Lone hen intro's are not impossible (I have read) but you would have to be prepared to be patient and take things very slowly. I have no experience of Ex batts myself so I will leave that up to someone else to say about whether they feel they would be accepting etc.

 

You would also need to consider that you would need seperate accomodation for the extra hen you wish to intro for a good few weeks.

 

Intro'ing Hens in a pair would be easier, however your eglu will not be big enough for 5 hens IMO. When I wanted to go to more girls I switched to a cube as that gave them far more space. (I already had the WIR for both the eglu and the cube)

 

I have done two lots of pair intro's so far and will be doing another pair intro in the coming months

[sandyhas3chucks]

I successfully introduced a lone hen, to 3 but they were really 2 + 1(bullied girl)

Apart from chook 4 needing special care she was a friend 1st for the bullied one.

It took some months and they never did all sleep in the same Eglu, but with the help of a large WIR could be left all together!

IMO a standard Eglu run is not big enough for 4 ex bats for extended periods!

my opinion., and experience.

[Porkypie]

I am still very new to all this and introduced 1 to 2 last summer (for complicated reasons). It is pretty tough on the lone hen and quite disruptive for the established two. Maybe best to wait until you have two hens left and introduce two new ones? I found it a lot of work going through the introductions (very slowly) for one new hen at the end of it so next time I'll be going for at least two newbies