Introducing New Chickens and Other Poultry into Your Existing Flock

Reader Contribution by Lydia Noyes
Updated on June 28, 2022
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Adobe Stock/antonivano

Learn some tips about introducing new chickens, or even new bird species, such as guinea fowl, into your existing backyard poultry flock.

One of the biggest appeals for me about moving to our historic Appalachian homestead this fall was the opportunity to have some poultry. I have a love for chickens that defies common sense for someone that has never owned her own, so I convinced my husband to make it a priority to restore the old chicken coop on our property. When we arrived in late August, the chicken coop was so choked with a weed forest that the door couldn’t be opened.

We worked together over several several weeks to clean the coop and build an outdoor run for the birds. Learning as we went and utilizing the help of several work groups, we eventually twisted the last piece of poultry wire into place and were ready to claim some chickens for our own. One of our neighbors had agreed to sell us a portion of his expansive flock, so the two of us packed the dog’s crate into the back of the Sisters’ pickup and drove the half mile past Big Laurel to his property to buy them.

We gathered the hens without too much difficulty and brought them back to our newly restored coop. The size of the coop dwarfed our six tiny hens, and the underutilized space was all the encouragement we needed to peruse Craigslist until we found more fowl to add to the mix. Two weeks after getting our original six, we added two silkie chickens, and a month after that we introduced four guinea fowl.

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