One Flock? Integrating New Chickens Into an Established Flock
There comes a point when raising a new group of chicks when the brooder is long behind you, the awkward adolescent feathers have mostly disappeared, and the little chickens you've been tending suddenly look very much like chickens.
Then comes the complicated part.
They have to meet everyone else.
This spring, we added six young birds to Verdigris Market Garden. For the first months, they lived as their own little flock, separate from our established hens. That gave them time to grow, feather out and become large enough to safely navigate life among full-grown chickens.
Eventually, however, two flocks needed to become one.
And while there are plenty of recommendations for introducing new chickens, there is an important thing to remember before beginning:
Chickens do not read the recommendations.
Why Not Just Put Them Together?
An established flock isn't simply a collection of chickens sharing a coop.
It is a social system.
Chickens develop relationships and establish a hierarchy — the very real origin of the phrase pecking order. Each bird occupies a place within that structure, and adding several unfamiliar chickens means some of those relationships have to be worked out again.
That doesn't mean every peck or chase is cause for alarm.
Some posturing, chasing, pecking and squabbling can be part of normal flock behavior, particularly during an introduction. Our job isn't necessarily to prevent chickens from establishing their social order. It is to give them an opportunity to do so without allowing one bird to be relentlessly bullied, cornered, deprived of food or water, or injured.
So rather than simply opening the door and hoping everyone could work it out, we began with a gradual introduction.
Creating a Meeting Place
We started by cleaning the large run and constructing a smaller secured area within it for the younger chickens.
The barrier gave our new birds some protection while allowing both groups to become acquainted. They could see and hear one another, investigate through the barrier and generally get used to the idea that there were suddenly unfamiliar chickens occupying their world.
The older hens, naturally, were very interested in these developments.
This arrangement also gave the younger chickens a chance to recover from the next part of the process:
Moving day.
Chickens Have Other Plans
Catching and transporting a group of chickens sounds reasonably straightforward until you attempt to explain the procedure to the chickens.
We collected enough birds to safely transport at one time, carried them to the large run and released them into their temporary secured area.
Then we went back for more.
And repeated the process until everyone had arrived.
Mostly.
At one point our young rooster made a rather spectacular bid for freedom and temporarily introduced his own approach to flock integration: leave the flock entirely.
He was eventually caught and reunited with the other young birds.
Moving chickens is stressful for them even when everything goes according to plan, so once everyone was safely contained, we provided fresh food, fresh water and some treats and then did something equally important:
We left them alone.
For the next several hours, the younger birds could explore their new surroundings and settle down while the established hens investigated their new neighbors from the other side of the barrier.
Sometimes the best thing you can do for an animal after creating a stressful situation is stop interfering with it.
Then the Barrier Comes Down
Later that day, as evening approached, we returned and opened the smaller enclosure.
Now the chickens could actually mingle.
This is where observation becomes particularly important.
We expected some disagreement. The goal wasn't an immediate scene of interspecies harmony with everyone joining wings and singing around the feeder.
We were looking instead for the difference between normal social behavior and genuine danger.
A peck followed by retreat is one thing. A chicken relentlessly pursuing another bird that cannot escape is something else. The birds need room to move away from one another, access to food and water, and human intervention if ordinary flock politics begin turning into injury.
We also deliberately moved into this stage later in the day.
As daylight fades, chickens naturally begin thinking about settling in for the night. Introducing birds closer to roosting time can sometimes make the transition less disruptive than beginning first thing in the morning and providing everyone with an entire energetic day to argue about it.
The hope was that the birds would mingle, settle down, go into the coop together, sleep, wake together the next morning and continue sorting themselves out from there.
That was the plan.
Once again, nobody had provided the chickens with a copy.
Getting Everyone to Bed
As evening progressed, the younger hens showed remarkably little interest in putting themselves into an unfamiliar coop simply because I thought it was bedtime.
Eventually, encouragement became necessary.
One by one, we corralled the younger hens and got them into the coop with the established girls.
Our rooster presented a different problem.
He had become somewhat aggressive during the introduction, and the older hens were making their opinion of his behavior quite clear. Rather than insist that everyone resolve the situation before dark, I changed the plan.
The hens would spend the night together.
The rooster would return to his old coop alone.
Everyone could sleep on it.
This is perhaps the most useful lesson from the entire process: animal husbandry requires a plan, but it also requires being willing to abandon that plan when the animals in front of you are telling you something different.
There is no prize for completing an integration according to schedule.
One More Chicken
The next morning, the hens were doing remarkably well.
There was still some sorting out of relationships, but we weren't seeing anything that suggested the integration had failed. The younger birds were functioning within the larger group, and the established hens seemed increasingly resigned to the fact that their household had expanded.
That left one bird.
We moved the rooster into the large run and watched.
After all his theatrics the previous day, his second introduction was almost anticlimactic.
He settled in.
From that point forward, we allowed things to progress organically while continuing to keep an eye on the flock.
And gradually, two groups simply became one.
Integration Isn't About Perfect Harmony
I think it is tempting, particularly when we're new to keeping chickens, to interpret every disagreement as evidence that something has gone wrong.
But chickens are social animals with their own rules.
Successful flock integration doesn't necessarily mean preventing every peck, chase or squabble. It means creating circumstances in which the birds can establish their relationships without allowing ordinary social behavior to become dangerous.
For us, that meant a protected introduction, plenty of space, food and water, several hours of observation, a nighttime move, separating one bird when his behavior concerned us, and trying again the following morning.
Your flock, your facilities and your individual chickens may require something different.
That's part of keeping animals.
We can learn their behavior. We can create good conditions. We can make thoughtful plans.
And then we have to pay attention.
Because sometimes the animals will tell us what the next step needs to be.
Our six younger chickens are now living with the established hens as one integrated flock.
The rooster has found his place, the hens have largely worked out their differences, and normal chicken life has resumed.
The entire operation was completed with only one minor injury.
Mine.
Apparently, while everyone else was negotiating the pecking order, I was the one who needed first aid.
Watch the whole process here!
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