We finally were able to introduce our two groups of young birds this Easter weekend. But we had a fight! What should we do?
We live in Canada and it’s been too cold to build anything outside so we have two brooders separated by glass with chicks quickly outgrowing their space.
We’re working on a temporary solution though and we were finally able to let them meet each other without a barrier! Yay! We wanted enough space that we could be with them just in case things got ugly and thank goodness we did.
The two groups are a few months apart in age. The first group of four were born in late December and the second group of eleven were born late February/early March. I’ve heard that you can mix chicks with up to a three week difference in age but that clearly wasn’t an option here so we set the new guys up next to the older ones with glass between them so they can still get to know each other even if they don’t inhabit the same space, this seems to have worked fabulously! Apart from the glass which has a crack (reinforced now), would recommend something like plexiglass instead.
The big rooster from the older kids likes to cuddle with his girlfriend while watching the little ones, and the little ones hang out next to them on the other side.
Finally the little guys are getting big enough that we thought we’d try and see how they’d all get along on the newly enclosed porch. It actually went really well! A couple of the little guys got a gentle peck from the two almost-hens when they were blocking the food but apart from that they were wonderful together.
There are probably three cockerels amongst the little guys, the biggest one (a partridge rock mix) seems to be a little bossy though, he picks fights with the Brahma cockerel all the time. The Brahma is five days younger than the partridge guy and smaller for now as well as fairly non reactive, he’ll raise his hackles and stand his ground but doesn’t escalate anything, the last cockerel is a bantam Cochin who doesn’t bother with any of that and just hangs out with the girls, he probably knows that he’s too small to stand a chance.
The two big roosters from the older group we introduced last. They were well behaved, mostly ignoring the little ones and exploring the space.
The partridge rock mix though, he had other plans. He decided to pick a fight with the big boss. He got stomped almost immediately and tried to hide the entire rest of the time. We managed to split them up very quickly but the poor little guy definitely has a bruised ego and the running and hiding seemed to trigger the big guy to go for him several more times (they’re both very good boys with us so it was easy to pick one up before anything happened).
The big rooster has only ever fought once before when he was maybe a month old and the cockerel who in now the second largest rooster came home from being a nursing companion to a sick chick. The big guy chased the little guy around several times because the smaller one probably picked a fight (he was very excitable when he was little and would jump at you when he got too worked up).
So I think the big guy is just reacting to threatening behaviour and not actually looking for trouble (thank goodness).
Any tips on what we should do? Advice other than rehoming or culling please, these birds are family already and we’re willing to put a lot of effort into whatever we need to do to keep them.
The handsome partridge drama queen
Tall, dark, and usually better behaved
Group shot with the boys numbered from biggest to smallest. 1 and 3 had the fight. There are 15 birds total but one was out of frame. We know it’s a bad roo/hen ratio, we’ll be getting more hens eventually and are already watching to make sure none of the ladies get roughed up come puberty.
Also please ignore the heeler trying to open a locked door, she hasn’t earned her chicken privileges yet.
We live in Canada and it’s been too cold to build anything outside so we have two brooders separated by glass with chicks quickly outgrowing their space.
We’re working on a temporary solution though and we were finally able to let them meet each other without a barrier! Yay! We wanted enough space that we could be with them just in case things got ugly and thank goodness we did.
The two groups are a few months apart in age. The first group of four were born in late December and the second group of eleven were born late February/early March. I’ve heard that you can mix chicks with up to a three week difference in age but that clearly wasn’t an option here so we set the new guys up next to the older ones with glass between them so they can still get to know each other even if they don’t inhabit the same space, this seems to have worked fabulously! Apart from the glass which has a crack (reinforced now), would recommend something like plexiglass instead.
The big rooster from the older kids likes to cuddle with his girlfriend while watching the little ones, and the little ones hang out next to them on the other side.
Finally the little guys are getting big enough that we thought we’d try and see how they’d all get along on the newly enclosed porch. It actually went really well! A couple of the little guys got a gentle peck from the two almost-hens when they were blocking the food but apart from that they were wonderful together.
There are probably three cockerels amongst the little guys, the biggest one (a partridge rock mix) seems to be a little bossy though, he picks fights with the Brahma cockerel all the time. The Brahma is five days younger than the partridge guy and smaller for now as well as fairly non reactive, he’ll raise his hackles and stand his ground but doesn’t escalate anything, the last cockerel is a bantam Cochin who doesn’t bother with any of that and just hangs out with the girls, he probably knows that he’s too small to stand a chance.
The two big roosters from the older group we introduced last. They were well behaved, mostly ignoring the little ones and exploring the space.
The partridge rock mix though, he had other plans. He decided to pick a fight with the big boss. He got stomped almost immediately and tried to hide the entire rest of the time. We managed to split them up very quickly but the poor little guy definitely has a bruised ego and the running and hiding seemed to trigger the big guy to go for him several more times (they’re both very good boys with us so it was easy to pick one up before anything happened).
The big rooster has only ever fought once before when he was maybe a month old and the cockerel who in now the second largest rooster came home from being a nursing companion to a sick chick. The big guy chased the little guy around several times because the smaller one probably picked a fight (he was very excitable when he was little and would jump at you when he got too worked up).
So I think the big guy is just reacting to threatening behaviour and not actually looking for trouble (thank goodness).
Any tips on what we should do? Advice other than rehoming or culling please, these birds are family already and we’re willing to put a lot of effort into whatever we need to do to keep them.
The handsome partridge drama queen
Tall, dark, and usually better behaved
Group shot with the boys numbered from biggest to smallest. 1 and 3 had the fight. There are 15 birds total but one was out of frame. We know it’s a bad roo/hen ratio, we’ll be getting more hens eventually and are already watching to make sure none of the ladies get roughed up come puberty.
Also please ignore the heeler trying to open a locked door, she hasn’t earned her chicken privileges yet.