If you’re like us, you might have found that the chickens you started your flock with just aren’t cutting it. Sure, you technically have enough eggs, but you could always use more, right? In our case, we started with 6 pullets -it turns out one of them wasn’t a pullet after all. So, we have 5 hens laying eggs. But, when push comes to shove, that just isn’t enough for us to eat the amount of eggs we would like. Today, we’re going to discuss how we purchased 6 new pullets. And, more important, we’re talking about introducing these pullets to our existing chicken flock.
Our Flock Growth
If you’re looking for the full story on our chickens, you can check out the information our backyard chickens page. The long and the short of it: we ended up with four Rhode Island red hens, one Ameraucana hen, and one Rhode Island rooster. At first, this seemed like plenty. When producing at their peak, we could get 4-5 eggs a day and that worked for us. But, as we strive to be more self sufficient, we’d like to be eating more eggs. And, we’ve also found during their molt (and continuing on) we’re getting fewer eggs than before. With that in mind, we knew it was time to expand.
So, rather than work on incubating eggs, we decided we wanted some more variety in our flock. We went back to Rural King and purchased a wider variety of chickens. We got an Olive egger, some more blue eggers, another brown egger, and some mystery eggers. The idea is that once they all start laying, we’ll have a great variety of egg colors. But, when the time came for us to introduce them to the existing flock, we had to do our homework. How do you go about introducing pullets to your chicken flock?
Introducing Pullets to Our Chicken Flock
For us, the answer to this involved a few Google searches and some subsequent reading. And, the fortunate answer is that it’s pretty straightforward. In fact, some people just outright rip off the bandage and intermingle them when the time comes. For us, we took a slightly more conservative approach.
Since we had raised the pullets in a dog crate, we decided to stick to that same method for their initial transition. With some A-1 redneck engineering, I put a roosting bar into the largest dog crate we could find, put that crate on a pallet, and placed them inside the existing chicken run. This way, the larger chickens are able to get right up next to their younger flock-mates.
Keeping this method up, we’ve left them in the run for a couple weeks. So, the fun part starts this weekend. We’ll be letting the new chickens out of their crate to interact directly with the other birds. One word of caution if you go this route -monitor the release. We plan to spend some extra time outside over the weekend keeping an eye on things. But, what exactly do you need to look out for?
How to Ensure Your New Chickens are Integrating
The biggest concern with introducing pullets to a chicken flock is that they will be picked on. You’ve likely heard about the pecking order. That’s a real thing. And, if you’re not careful, these younger hens can get picked on by their bigger flock-mates. This means we’ll be looking out for any aggressive behavior that occurs and separating for longer as needed. Hopefully, having been right in there next to one another for a couple weeks, there will be no incidents. But, we’re ready to watch for it just in case.
Maintaining Peace on the Homestead
When it comes down to it, a lot of raising livestock comes down to ensuring they can get along properly. In our case, we’ve done some things right, and we’ve made some mistakes. This is why we are being extra cautious with our new pullets to ensure they can integrate into the flock without incident. So far, it seems the established hens are getting along just fine with the new ones. But, as we enter into the weekend, we’ll be completing the transition by letting them co-mingle. Make sure to check back soon for an update on their status.
Do you have any secrets on how to maintain the peace on your homestead? Let us know in the comments below! Until next time, we’ll see you around the homestead.