You might remember I got a few hens around Easter- 4. Well now I have 11 and a rooster!! Quite the population increase. Anyway last Monday I bought 2 new young hens and popped them in with my resident hens. One of the newbies is a young bluebell hen. Anyway she is very timid and spends the day in the hen house and wont venture out. When she does, the others peck her a bit as she runs past. So I was thinking that she wasn't getting enough to eat or drink so I'm now giving her some food and water every morning into the house. I'm waiting for a new bigger hen house to arrive this week and I hope to take the current house and separate out the bluebell until she becomes more confident. I'm going to see some purebred hens tomorrow so the owner may have a quiet hen i could pop in with my bluebell in the other house. Other than that, is there anything I can do to integrate the bird?

The term 'pecking order' reveals its true meaning when integrating a new hen to a flock!

When I kept chickens we used to integrate new ones by confining all the established birds in their pen (they were usually free range and only in their small pen at night) with the new birds in a similar pen immediately beside it. This way they all got used to each other's presence but no damage could be done. After two days of this the new birds were put into the 'old' birds' house during the night and when they were all let out in the morning there was no trouble.

Once owned an hermaphrodite hen/cock, it looked like a hen, and I had to remove her or the others would have killed her. Could be your hen has bisexual problems and you will not get her accepted.

Having said that I always found that introducing an adult to a flock of established hens a problem and a good deal of pecking went on, having been pecked on my hand I know that this will and does draw blood so hens are not a very docile creature.

its a common problem. you need to get her out of there if its one of those arc things you have her in :(   (we call them out door battery cages!!!! and get her in her own accomodation. if you can get a bigger run/house and put her in there on her own for a few weeks and then put the others in with HER it will probaby solve it, as they will be moving into her territory. failing that just put one hen at a time in with her, maybe a week between each one,, until they are all in together. They WILL kill her and they ARE cannibals so be careful.

Hens are very clannish and this is probably the time of year that they are most geared up for a scrap anyway. I always introduce any new birds at night after they've gone in to roost, and I have 25 birds (18 hens and 7 cockerels--will be taking some of the cockerels away shortly :(-- all living together in a big run with three choices of living accommodation. They all choose to live in the same house, even the call ducks. The other two just get used when I want to separate a hen and her chicks from the others. The birds don't seem to react as much when they all wake up together. You don't say whether you have a cockerel--that definitely changes to the social dynamics of the flock and as long as he accepts her the rest fall into line. If your hens have plenty of room to roam they are not likely to attack each other, but those little wooden arks are trouble

I do have a cockeral- a big rhode island red one and he is a gentle bird and doesn't bully any of the hens. He is very social and makes a noise like a pigeon when he sees me coming. I fed the bluebell hen on her own the past few days. I have 2 hen houses with an 80 foot enclosed run so they have plenty of space. I let them have the run of the acre and a half garden when I'm home. Yesterday when I let them out, the bluebell hopped out with them and has had no more trouble. I think that she is just a fair bit younger and didn't have the confidence to go out and stand up for herself. I'm hoping to add a few buff sussex and maran hens tomorrow- 4 in total and that will conclude my hen family!!

Hi Kate H, I saw you'd mentioned the cockerel in your earlier post, just not reading carefully enough--sorry! Glad your hen has settled, they just have to run the gauntlet, don't they. I recommend Welsummers for friendly hens, I plan to get a few more this year. But the star of our show is a little gold Dutch bantam, who is completely adorable and very chatty--likes to get close up to your face and mews like a kitten, and will happily fly onto my shoulder. I don't know why or how she suddenly got into this, I'd had her for about ten months and although I talk to my birds I don't go out of my way to hand tame them--I'm just so delighted she likes the company. Anyone who dismisses hens'intelligence has never been near one.

Well I added the new girls today so I now have 7 hybrids, 1 rhode island red, 2 blackrocks, 1 bluebell, 1 light sussex, 1 buff sussex, 2 speckled marans, 1 welsummer and 1 rhode island red rooster. Quite the rainbow of colours!!

Lovely :-)

I am planning to sneak off to a local specialist sale next month which by great good fortune occurs immediately after pay day :-) :-) :-) so will see what there is to smuggle back into the run without setting the rest of my family squawking "You did WHAT!!!!!!"