I added 10 older hens to my flock last night -

[hedgehog]

somehow or another, I ordered 1 rooster this spring and ended up adding 4 or 5 ( I swear I spot a new one evey time I count! Like - how did I order 5 Silver Spangled Hamburg hens and end up with 5 hens and a rooster? The hatchery generally throws in an extra rooster, but then, bow did I get 5 Austrolorp hens and an extra rooster? And just where did those 2 Speckled Sussex roosters come from? ) I've bought from this hatchery for years without any mixups, so I'm not upset.

Anyways, the lady I bought them from just wants 1st year birds for her egg business, so I'm providing a nice retirement home for these ladies. The five Red Sex link birds have been hanging in the hen house, but the 5 Black sex link birds have been wandering around.

And - one of the black chickens actually crossed the road!

[LWolf]

1. WHY???

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Did you add grown hens to an established flock?

Not sure what I am hearing, but if you had a flock and added more birds, tell me the secret.

We got Buff Orpington chicks this year, mixed run, and I gave half the order to a friend, mostly roosters, but some hens also, on the condition that if I needed more hens once the chicks grew, I could get some back.
Included in the order were 2 "mystery" birds. One turned out to be a Silver Spangled rooster, one a "maybe" Buff Orpington rooster. I say maybe because his legs are grey, the Buff hens and the remaining Buff rooster legs are yellow.
Anyhow, we asked for a hen to be returned to us, 4 months later, and the flock would not accept her.
so she is in a separate run all by herself.
Next week the roosters will be put into their own run, and we are hoping the hens will accept the new hen into the flock.

[hedgehog]

4. I think the key was that I had a group of older hens.

The Black Sex Link hens look very much like my Australorps. They were pretty much all the way through their molt. They have mixed so thouroughly with the flock that I can't count them. I have somewhere between 7 and 10 black hens, but I get a different count each time! I strongly suspect there are two more hens across the road or back in the woods.

The 5 Red Sex Link birds are about halfway through their molt. They tend to hang together around the chicken house.

I think there are enough new birds that no one bird gets picked on.

[mopinko]

3. i bought 4 araucana "hens"

got 2 roosters, and a hen of questionable pedigree.
the roosters are a scream, but they will have to be soup soon. one at least. might have a few chicks just for fun.
then soup.