As summer draws to a close and the days grow shorter, I find myself immediately thinking ahead to next year and starting to plan what I’ll do differently. However, I am also always trying to remind myself to stay present. Enjoy and appreciate where I am. Bask in the metaphorical sunshine of today because tomorrow may be rain. I find that a hard balance to strike. Being happy with where I am while also pursuing new possibilities and challenges. Anybody else struggle with this? I feel like most of the messages we receive are to not be satisfied with what we have, that happiness is just around the corner.

The changing seasons do help me appreciate the end of something and the possibility of what’s to come. The cyclical nature of life. That whatever it is, we’ll pass through it. And what may feel insurmountable today will equip us for the next challenge.

One of the recent changes Farm Charm had to go through was integrating our mature (19 birds) and juvenile (14 birds) chicken flocks. I’ve done this before pretty successfully and have usually waited until the juveniles were about 12 weeks old. This year I needed to do it closer to the 10-week mark because I was going out of town and the logistics I was performing each morning to separate the two flocks to ensure the babies had a couple of hours to eat their food while also making sure the hens could get to their nesting boxes was much too complicated to ask of our house sitter.

I joined the two flocks on a Saturday afternoon so I could watch them the rest of that day and all the next day while working in the yard. There were really no scuffles to speak of day one and the two flocks seemed to keep to themselves. The first night the babies did not know to go in the coop, which has happened before, so I shuffled them in at dusk. Sunday went smoothly as well throughout the day and once again I needed to scoot the babies in at sunset. By day three they were falling into a rhythm, eating separately each morning and then joining the whole group around midday.  The rest of the week had no major issues and I didn’t see any noticeable signs of aggression or dominance by the mature hens. A peck here and there but nothing to make me concerned.

There was a tragedy the following Saturday, day eight, that I won’t go into the details of but the bottom line is one of the juveniles got pecked to death by a hen. This was a pretty traumatic experience for me and made me quite upset that I had somehow let my guard down or not done my due diligence for this to even be possible.

To save even one person and bird from this heartache, I have a few tips to keep in mind when joining flocks.

1. Have multiple feeders and waterers so there is no sense of competition. Check that all birds can fit around the feeders.
2. Be sure there are ample perches in the coop so that the respective flocks have their own space.
3. Don’t ever let one or two of the juveniles get separated from their flock.
4. If there is a smaller bird or runt, double and triple check that it stays with its flock during the day and at night.
5. If there is pecking by the mature hens, create a partition of some sort so the juveniles have a retreat or safe space.
6. Watch and observe regularly. I was out in the coop for about 30 minutes every day watching the ‘pecking order’ that was developing. The juveniles were being respectful of the hens and getting out of their way. And I didn’t see any hens being aggressive toward the juveniles other than a random peck when I threw out a few handfuls of scratch and a juvenile would bump into a hen.

Best of luck to everyone integrating flocks. If you have any tips, please share. And this time of year, you are likely seeing your birds start to molt so it’s a great opportunity to throw any last summer produce like tomatoes and herbs to your flock for extra nutrition.