BACKYARD CHICKENS: 7 Mistakes to Avoid When Adding to Your Backyard Flock

Rodale Wellness
by Lissa Lucas & Traci Torres of My Pet Chicken

These tips will help ensure a successful integration of new birds with old.

Adding new birds to your established flock can be stressful, both for you and the birds. You may think that because your established flock is peaceful, and because the birds you’re adding are peaceful, adding more chickens to your flock is simply a matter of, well, putting them all into the henhouse together. But woe betide to the backyard chicken keeper who tries that!

Your flock’s pecking order will be flung off-kilter by newcomers. Every new bird will have to stake a claim for the primo nesting and roosting spots, and all of your old birds will have to defend their places from the up-and-coming. The new girls won’t know that Flora gets dibs on the corner nest, or that Prissy always gets to eat first. Your new birds don’t know the flock’s rules of civil chicken discourse and will be making all sorts of horrifying social faux pas, like sunbathing in someone else’s favorite spot or leaving the coop before Betty does. The horror! It will be as bad as the worst soap opera or middle-school drama you can think of. Fashion will be made fun of–the ladies with beards or crests, if they are in the minority, will be laughed at relentlessly (or more likely excluded from the lunch group). Or perhaps it will be those without fancy feathering who will be ostracized. There will be bullying, alliances made and discarded, friends won and lost, and so on. Someone will always be in high dudgeon. War is hell, and so is middle school–and chicken flocks in upheaval.

The good news is that if you handle things correctly, the worst of the pecking order wars should last only a week or two. Plus, there are a few steps you can take to make the introduction process much easier on all of you.

1. Don’t forget to quarantine the new birds for at least 4 weeks first.
You’ll need this time to make sure they don’t have any infections or communicable health issues that the rest of your flock can catch.

2. Don’t commingle your new birds too soon.
It takes at least a week for the newcomers to establish their spots in the pecking order from with in their separate enclosure. Two weeks is preferable.

3. Don’t add just one hen to a large flock.
If you do that, all the flock’s aggression and worry will be directed at the one lone, new hen, and it will be difficult to get her integrated successfully. Ideally, add a few hens or more at a time. Even when your flock is small–say, just three hens–it will be easier to add two rather than one.

4. Don’t acquire breeds that won’t work well with your flock.
If you have a basically homogeneous flock consisting of Rhode Island Reds and other traditional-looking chickens, adding crested Polish or fancy-feathered Faverolles can make for an extraordinarily rough transition period for the new girls. Your established flock may not exactly recognize the newcomers as chickens, much less flock members. If you want to keep many different fancy breeds together, start out with a flock of a few different breeds, or else make the introductions extra slow.

5. Don’t introduce baby chicks when they’re too young and too small.
Certainly no younger than six weeks old. You want to introduce them when they’re old enough to take some moderate scuffling, so they don’t get hurt.

6. Don’t squeeze too many birds into your space.
Believe us; we do understand that chickens can be addictive. Is it Chickenosis? Chicken Fever? Regardless, there are so many beautiful breeds, you may find yourself wanting one of each, even when you really don’t have the infrastructure. So, as you add to your flock, make sure to expand the coop and run space, and add additional nest boxes, feeders, and waterers as necessary. And when you do that: Don’t forget that even if you have plenty of feeder/waterer space, adding birds means your feeders and waterers will empty more quickly, so you will need to check and refill them more often.

7. Don’t make it impossible for your new birds to access food and water.
If you’re adding younger birds or bantams, remember that your feeders and waterers may need to be lowered so that your new birds can easily reach them.

If you can’t offer lots of space–or even if you can–distractions can help.

• Hang a half a head of cabbage–or a suet cage with treats, scraps, and greens–barely within reach so the chickens have to work to get at them.

• Temporarily add large branches to the run and the coop, making pursuit more difficult and giving the new birds places to hide.

• Put straw, dead leaves, mulched dry grass clippings, and/or pulled weeds in their run, giving them plenty to dig through.

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