When to best integrate young/old birds?
Our take
| | The pictured hen is Delilah and she is my favorite chicken… she’s also been through Hell and back. I’ll try and keep this short (not one of my strengths): she was attacked by a Fox but not killed. I brought her inside and nursed her to health. when I reintroduced her to the flock she was rejected and bullied. I then took her to my farm where I have 2 other flocks and tried to place her there… second picture of her face is what they did to her. I nursed her back to health and verrrry sloooowly reintroduced her back with her original flock… this time it took, but she is and will always be the 3rd wheel outcast to some degree. all that happened ending about 2 month ago. Delilah is probably 4+ years old and SUPER FRIENDLY. She comes running up to me and almost reaches out for me to hold her. I absolutely love this chicken! Fast forward to current day… I have built another coop and enclosure on my farm… starting my 4th flock. This coop and arena will be a feature of the front entrance to my farm, think of it as live art. I’ll try and post pics in comments. I have purchased 9 each Jersey Giant pullets at 5 weeks of age as of yesterday. They will be on starter/crumbles until about 9 weeks. If not familiar, Jersey Giants are the largest breed of chicken ever created… hence why I selected that breed as a live art feature for my farm. I intend to have Delilah be the Queen to the young pullets… I want to keep her as a pet and to teach the pullets how to be friendly and approachable to people. I also want to give Delilah the gift of being in an environment where she can live amongst other chickens who will not bully her. So… the 5 week old pullets are on Crumbles for another 4 weeks and I probably shouldn’t give them access to Layer (or can I?) Should I introduce Delilah immediately or wait until the pullets are on Layer? [link] [comments] |
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