More like .. chicken shuffle day!
Baby Chicks
It’s been two months since we brought home 22 baby chicks. A snake killed one of them so we now have 21. The coop we put them in was big enough for 12 full size hens . . it would be better with 10. With them being almost grown, 21 chickens in there was way too crowded and getting worse every day.
It’s not good to combine chickens who are strangers so you have to “introduce” them to each other by letting them get to know each other while not actually being able to get together and fight.
Our big coop is actually a duplex and each side of it is big enough for about 20 chickens. There were 17 chickens in the whole coop so we decided to close off one side, so all 17 chickens will have to use the other side.
Empty Big Coop
We started out yesterday morning cleaning out one side of the big coop.
Little Coop
Then we cleaned out the little coop.
Moving Chickens
Then, one by one, we caught and moved 11 chickens. Catching a chicken isn’t easy. Thank goodness yesterday was about 25 degrees cooler than Friday!
Now the 10 Wyandottes are in the small coop. I think three of those are roosters so we’ll end up keeping 1 of them and that will give us 8 chickens in the small coop. That won’t be too many in there.
There are 11 Marans in one side of the big coop. We closed in the run so , when they go outside the coop, they will be out in the run for a week or so. The other chickens can see them and get close but there will always be chicken wire between them. By next weekend, we’ll let the Marans loose with the other chickens and hope for the best. There may be a bit of bickering and struggling for positions but they’ll figure it out.
Jackie says
I had no idea you had to gradually introduce them to each other, having chickens is more work then I thought.
Connie says
They are very mean! I had one chicken killed. I never would have believed it either, but now I know where the term “henpecked” comes from.
Rebecca in SoCal says
And “pecking order”!