I have 3 adult hens and am currently trying to add 2 hens that are approx. 5 months old. They have shared a pen with a wire divider down the middle for the last six weeks so they could get used to each other and the babies could get a little bigger. I took out the divider 2 days ago and basically the older hens are trying to kill the new ones. I keep letting the older hens out in the yard to give the new hens a chance to eat and drink but as soon as the older hens come back to roost or lay the mayhem starts. I was going to let it run it's course but I just checked on them and one of the youngsters has 2 dime size chunks out of her neck that are dripping blood!! This is the first blood I've seen on them and I don't know what to do. Do I seperate them again? For how long? Is this normal and I should just let it run it's course? Help!!

I would seperate them immediately, sometimes blood encourages more attacks. I've never had much success introducing younger hens with older ones. I've read that sometimes you can introduce them at night but this hasn't seemed to work out to well either.

Gail, you have done the right thing--separation, but it doesn't always work. Some birds do not just "get acquainted" through the wire divider, the older birds just have more time to get ready to attack the newcomers, and they are just waiting for the chance! Your younger birds will not develop well if they cannot eat and roost in peace, and indeed the older birds can kill them, a terrible death. Just keep them separate! I never try to add younger birds to a pen, but for many it is successful. Partly depends upon the breed of chickens, some naturally seem to be more mellow, but mostly just depends upon the individual birds. Good luck, CJR

Hi Gail. I have recently and successfully integrated a flock of younger birds into my existing environment. I believe that the keys are supervision of initial visits together in conjunction with giving lots of room so that the younger birds can keep away from larger birds.

I have an 8'x8' coop with 7 hens @ 7 months and 15 pullets @ 3 months. Their run is 15'x30', and they free-range on 3/4 acre pretty much the whole day.

I'm going to warn you right now that it did take some effort to juggle old birds and young birds in a single facility. You cannot keep the young ones packed in too tightly for too long because they grow fast and will get bored and start pecking at each other. So I had to get them integrated fairly quickly if I didn't want to build a totally separate facility for the new flock. However, if I were going to raise different age birds on a regular basis, I would at least build a 2nd run with a small shelter to keep birds separate until they reached at least 2 months.

For the first month or so, the young ones were separated in the coop with a wire partition just like yours. Even though they saw each other every day and lived in the same coop, it didn't help aquaint them at all.

After one month, I started letting the young ones out into the common area of the coop to explore for brief periods usually by themselves and always supervised. If big birds came around, I let them do a little chasing and running but never to the point that they got seriously attacked or overly stressed. I wanted to let them establish an order on their own as much as possible but at a very slow pace. Of course, the older birds will always be dominant initially. Also, when the older birds were finished laying eggs for the afternoon, I would lock them out of the coop until dusk to give the young birds the run of the coop and a chance to learn that it was their home too.

I didn't leave birds alone unsupervised until about two months. At that time, I still had the partition in the coop and I cut out a small section of wire at the floor level and installed a small wooden slatted frame with narrow openings into the hole so that only the young slender birds could come and go into the partition. This gave them a way to escape from the larger birds without having to totally leave the protection of the coop. I also recall others writing about using boxes proped up slightly on one end for small birds to use as escape. They key was, once again, supervision. You need to let the birds demonstrate a consistent ability to escape the larger birds before leaving them unsupervised.

For me, it was only one or two birds that really liked to chase the young ones. Most other birds left them alone as long as they did not get too close. I didn't feed them together either because that seemed to cause more friction between them. I used separate feeders and I always tossed down scratch at two opposite ends of the run so the teams of birds would not eat together. The more room you have for the birds to stay away from each other the better.

At about 2 1/2 months, I finally had confidence that the birds were ready to try to coexist. I removed the partition and again supervised for the first few nights when they went to perch. Fortunately, I have two separate and distinct perch areas on opposite sides of the coop. The birds continued to stay pretty much separate even without the partition. The older birds always got first priority for coming in and perching at night. Once they were settled, the younger birds would make their way into the coop to find perch space. One thing that I had to do was to put a low-watt bulb on a timer so that there would be some light in the coop after dark for the young ones to make their way around. A couple of times young ones were caught outside after dark and I had to put them into the coop by hand.

Now they are a little over 3 months old they all feed from the same feeders and founts and will eat scratch together in the same group. But they don't hang out together. They still hang out in separate groups. But their tolerance of one another is much greater to the point that they all get into the coop on time to perch before dark and I have not seen a big bird chase a little bird for a few weeks.

I am seeing the young ones explore the property much more this week. Sometimes they even follow the older birds around. I expect them to all be pretty much integrated within the next month or two.

For the integration, I never had an incident that led to a wound because young birds always had plenty of room to run away. It is much harder to do damage when you strike a moving target than one that is cornered. Also, supervision at each major stage of integration allowed me to minimize problems leading to injury. Nevertheless, you do have to let them learn how to coexist together.

Good luck.

Steve