How our flock grew last year

There was no real plan in place when we got our first chickens.  We guessed about how many chickens would fit comfortably in our repurposed coop and took the plunge.  The six (then five)chickens seemed like a good fit and things were all good for that first year.

The following spring we had some friends stay with us for a couple weeks and in that time they bought us a gift...make that three gifts.....and they were baby chickens.  If I remember correctly two of them were welsummer chickens (the brown ones) and one was a black sex link chicken.  All three turned out to be hens - which is great - more eggs for everyone!

 Unfortunatly you can't just put baby chicks in with the big chickens.  The chicks would never survive the establishment of the pecking order (chickens can be brutal!), so while they grew up in their baby chicken brooder box we built a makeshift pen and coop right next to the original pen. 

The baby chicken coop was my attempt at making a broody box in case one of the original chickens decided that she wanted to hatch some eggs.  I made it using scrap lumber that our landlord gave us.  I think it only cost $10.00 and that was for the mesh sheet that made up the exercise portion of the box.

 

In any case, we had the pen servicable by the time the babies had learned how to escape from their brooder.

The next stage was to let the babies grow to their adult size in their safe and separate pen where the other chickens could see them and interact with them, but not hurt any of them.

Once they were big enough the babies were introduced into the main flock.  It took a couple weeks but they worked out all their differences and now happily sleep in the same coop at the big chickens.