Pro - Does anyone else's nest boxes get soaked in rain?

[Adams Egg]

My current flock is now down to three, all around 3 years old, so got some Ebay eggs and hatched three Lavender Araucana X Wheaten Marans that are now a month old.

One chick is a male, one is a female and the other is yet to make up its mind.

Once the mother rejoins the remaining flock there will be three youngsters on their own in their own run.

That could go down to a lone pullet when the cockerels go to their new home.

 

Working on the assumption that there will only be one pullet to introduce later this summer I thought about getting a couple of similar aged pullets to join it later this summer and do that intro first before putting all the new layers into the main flock

 

Any thoughts or experiences? All previous intros Ive done have always been gradual

[Chickabee]

Have you got room to make a run within your run with a cat basket or something similar for roosting. I've used this in the past, after a while take the temporary run away or just open it up and the old hens don't seem to notice that the others are new because they've already seen them

[Luvachicken]

Have you got room to make a run within your run with a cat basket or something similar for roosting. I've used this in the past, after a while take the temporary run away or just open it up and the old hens don't seem to notice that the others are new because they've already seen them

 

This is how I do my intro's, although I still left it for quite a while before I removed the divider.

When I first removed it, I stayed in with them for quite a while and then separated them with the divider again. I did this for a couple of days and then finally left them to it. It worked well

[Chickabee]

Are you sure it's not badgers, they can really climb. Do you have any in the area? Sounds more like the sort of thing they would do. I know that's no comfort, but might help solve the mystery. Badgers are built to dig anything and everything

[Lewis]

Do you already have or can you keep a cockerel for a while? Generally intro's with a cockerel are much easier as he sorts out squabbling but they'd have to be mature enough.

 

We have a few cockerels so after quarantine we now just free range them together and they join the flock pretty trouble free.

[Cat tails]

I've added my new two after boarding. Put them together in the cat boxes during the trip home and just stuck them together in the run when I got home.

I was surprised how little squabbling there was.

 

Last time I let the boarding place sort it out. They stuck them together in a new run with a cockerel and when I got home, I had a nice little joined flock. (The boarding place is a petting zoo, where I got 4 out of my 5 chickens from)