After the flooding caused by Hurrican Ian, we had to rehome the hens we adopted when we bought our home in 2020. Our road remained flooded for weeks and we couldn't take care of them anymore. Over a year later, my wife and I were ready to take care of backyard chickens again. We adopted 8 Welsumer Bantams that someone nearby was trying to rehome. We have enjoyed these Bantams and it was my first time every having Bantams.

The Bantams have been fun to watch. Since they are smaller than normal chickens, they can fly much better. I often find our chickens roosting in our enermous Live Oak. They are good tempered. Even the rooster is not aggressive. The only downside is, the eggs are small too.

So, we decided to begin trying to add to the flock to better support our family's consumption of eggs. A friend from church ended up selling us 5 Red Sex Link hens. So now we have to try and make one big happy flock. We knew it wouldn't be easy. We knew it wouldn't be perfect. Follow along and see what we did and what we learned.

Video 1: 01/12/2024

The first Introduction of the Chickens

Video 2: 01/26/2024

First Update since the new chickens were introduced. Its been about two weeks since Video 1. After just shy of one week in the dog crate, we let the new chickens out into the run and kept them seperated from the other chickens by placing plywood between the run and coop. The old chickens were then allowed to free range out of the coop while the new chickens were kept in the run. Every so often, the rooster or a hen would come by and investigate the new chickens in the run.

After a few days, I pulled the plywood board and allowed the chickens to have access to each other. BUT, I also opened the doors to allow them to free range. This was great because the chickens were able to spread out and were not forced to handle their differences in an enclosed space. At night, they all returned to the same coop and there didn't seem to be any problems. We have seen some hens trying to mount each other which is normal for establishing the pecking order. Up until this video we really haven't seen any aggressive fighting.