How to Bring New Chickens into Chicken Coop Flock Safely takes a few important steps and precautions but so worth the health and safety of your existing homestead chicken gang…. yes, I said gang because that is what they are – funny matriarchal society.
Thank you Lonnie Y. for letting us use a your picture of your massive flock.
Thinking about bringing in more chickens to your existing flock? You should probably check out their vaccination status. Before we tell you the steps you need to take while introducing new birds to your flock, you need to understand that there are three types of viruses; weak, crippled, and killed viruses. While weak viruses create a strong immune response, crippled and killed viruses are poorest at boosting immunity. However, live viruses (even crippled), unlike the inactive ones, can infect the birds, produce a mild reaction and can be shed.
Your chicken hens health is the most important element to your flock.
For this purpose, you can either use high protection or reduce the number of challenges for your birds. Consequently, you can take the following steps to maximize protection and ease the process:
1. Learn about the vaccination history of your existing birds: How long have they been vaccinated for and what vaccines have they had.
2. Find out the vaccination status of incoming birds: While you can never be sure about their vaccines, you need to ask any way.
3. Find out the similarities between existing and incoming birds so that you can give appropriate vaccinations to either group.
4. Introduce the new birds to the new surroundings first and then the old birds to ease the adaptability process.
5. Lastly, make the change as stress-free as possible.
Click here to read about how to Bring New Chickens into Chicken Coop Flock Safely:
https://farmingmybackyard.com/introducing-new-chickens/
and
Click here to read about The Secrets of Chicken Flocks’ Pecking Order:
https://modernfarmer.com/2016/03/pecking-order/
