Do you already have a couple of hens and you want to add another one two to the family? how many hens will you have? How many eggs will your hens produce? What will adding new hens do to the current pecking order?

These are things that you should seriously think about.

There are several things to consider when adding new hens to your current hen house

Disease
Your hens or their environment may have bacteria that could prove fatal for the new birds. For example, a hen could become immune to one of the nine strains of coccidia, common bacteria that are present virtually all the time with chicken flocks, but not have time to become immune if introduced suddenly to a flock that has a different strain.

Social Interaction
Birds have a pecking order, basically a hierarchy and social structure. Who's at the bottom, the top and in between is very important. Sudden disruptions by adding a new bird to that order may lead to serious injury, or worse, death for a bird.

Environmental Change
Hens are by nature suspicious birds, they are very wary of new surroundings, sounds and sights. Some would even starve to death instead of changing their diet. Some will just take a while to adapt to new surroundings and will appear shell-shocked and uncertain for about a week.

What to do when introducing a new hen

1. Vet the hen
Take the hen to get a check-up at the vet. Check for and treat diseases, communicable or not, also assess the general condition of the bird.

2. Quarantine the hen
Check with your chicken vet to see what amount of time they recommend to quarantine the hen for. During this period the hen may show signs of a disease developing, if this happens take it straight back to the vet. If not, move onto the next stage.

3. Slowly introduce the hen to the flock – do this in the following steps;

A. Let the bird listen – Place the hen somewhere where it can hear the other hens but not see them. This allows it to get used to the sounds of your flock and also for your flock to listen to the sounds of your new hen(s).

B. peek-a-boo – Once a few days have passed move the new hens cage so all the hens can see one another. This allows the new member of the family to see its new flock and interact more closely with them.

C. Meet and greet – Allow the new hen out of the cage to interact with the other members of the flock. I would recommend supervising this and also doing it in an open area, that way if anyone needs to run, they can.

D. New Housemate(s) – If step C goes smoothly try caging the hens together. It is very important that you keep a close eye on the hens once caged together and especially look for picking around the head and eyes. If there are signs of this remove that hen immediately. It may have to be caged separately.

If there are no signs of picking then you have successfully integrated a new hen to the flock.