Four new hens

I photographed them before their normal kerfuffle when the existing hens 'meet and greet' newbies, but when they tried picking on the new Speckledy (only PoL) hen she flattened all 3 incumbents and sent them running into the coop! The last Speckledy hen we got did exactly the same thing.

 

Along the

Think that is known as pecking order? Along the road from us we have a cat sanctuary where the owners keep a fair number of hens ducks geese and guinea fowl. They have a speckledy cockeral and it's pretty obvious he rules everything he surveys including a couple of really big geese who look terrified of him.

 

Ive seen some horrific pecking order shananigans going on with our hens over the years, but only intervened once and separated the two new arrivals. The rest of the time its over very quickly. It made me smile @silu to think of a cockerel bossing it over some geese!

 

That was 3 years ago and we were down to just one hen remaining.

So got another 4 new hens this morning. We'll be getting eggs from them before Easter.



Left to right Rhode Rock, Columbian Blacktail, Devon Blue and Blue Maran.

 

One day.... one day....

 

Lovely hens. I’m down to 3 now, all black rocks. Thinking of adding to them this, but never introduced new hens to an existing flock and not sure if I should wait until I lose another one or not.
Rusty

 

Mmmmmm, I'll get the curry sauce!

 

The minimum we've ever introduced is 3 new hens versus 2 existing hens, based on the assumption smaller numbers will get badly picked on.

This introduction has worked very, the incumbant sat on a log loudly denouncing them as they took over the place and trashed the inside of the henhouse.

She's been very lonely for the last couple of weeks and we're hoping she'll get over it very quickly and make new friends.

This is our 6th batch of hens and 5th time introducing new hens. It helps to have a house and run large enough for some extra ones during a period of 'overlap'.

 

Definitely works better introducing equal or greater number of new girls. I also keep the newbies in their travel cage until bedtime, let them watch the old-timers climb their ladder, then let them out to follow...They usually settle into wary but peaceable gangs the next day

 

I have alway introduce new hens at night time when they are at roost dont seem to have any bother in the morning. I dont think there like humans, can you imagine waaaaah who the hell are you how did you get in