Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: thestens on June 07, 2020, 13:10
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Managed to get 2 Blacktail and 1 light Sussex large chicks towards the end of March about 11 weeks ago. I was told they were about 12 weeks old then. One Blacktail started laying just over 2 weeks ago. Surely the other two must start soon. How long should I wait before trying to get some truly point of lay birds?
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The other 2 should start laying soon, but all hens are different and the breeder might have had a mixed batch of chicks perhaps?
If you want add birds to your flock, there will be fights. Your hens will have established their own pecking order and see the coop as theirs. The newbies may try and bully them, or may end up being bullied themselves. It is not always the biggest and oldest hen that end up as top dog.
Ideally you should quarantine new birds anyway and let both groups see each other, but not mix for a couple of weeks. It doesn't stop all the aggression, but it does take the worst of the sting out of it. If you can do that, you could get your new birds as soon as you see some that you like :)