Concerns about expanding your chicken flock:

If you had been enjoying your time in raising backyard chickens, you would have entually thought of expanding the number of chickens in your flock. You may feel that by increasing their number, you may be able to gain more benefits and more fun while raising them.

While this is true, you should be aware that expanding your backyard chicken flock is not as easy as just purchasing chickens and inserting them into your coop. There are some steps that you would have to ensure so that it would not turn out to be a chaotic situation.

Some of the things that you have to do and consider before you can expand your flock would include:

Ensuring Adequate Space and equipment:

The more chickens that you would have would also mean that you would need to have a bigger space to place them in. Constricting them in a very small chicken coop is bad for their health and it could lead to crowding and fights for territory as well as food.

You have to ensure that you are able to have adequate space (around 4square feet per chicken) inside the coop. You should also remember that the feeders and water containers should be able to cater to all of your backyard chickens. This means that they should have enough space to fit their bodies while eating so that you can avoid situations where the chickens are fighting for food.

Another concern could be with the nesting boxes that you would use for your hens. If you would have more hens, then you would need to install additional nesting boxes. This is done so that you would be able to avoid wasted eggs because the chickens were not able to lay them in the proper areas.

Making them feel welcome to the flock:

This is actually the biggest consideration that you would have to make when you want to add more chickens to the ones that you are raising in your backyard. This is because if you do not take these measures, you run the risk of the other chickens picking on them and attacking them.

Worse, adding more chickens to the flock without integrating them properly could actually cause some internal chaos with the “pecking order” of the existing chickens. They may become moody and restless if you do not do the proper measures before adding the new fowl to the flock.

Some of the ways that you could do to ensure that the new chickens would integrate well with the existing flock would be to add them during the night time and choosing a size and age that is consistent with those of the current chickens in the coop.

Yes, increasing the number of chickens would probably increase the amount of effort that you would have to exert in order to ensure their health and well being. However, you should rest assured that if done properly, expanding the number of backyard chickens that you have would also mean an increase in the enjoyment and the rewards that you would get from raising them.