Looking Back and Moving On, Part 5

We are getting about 3 eggs in 2 days from our chickens. The chicken killer managed to kill our BEST layers, and leave us our low-end hens. But we are using at least 2 eggs EVERY day, so we worked our way through that 5-dozen egg overstock pretty quickly. We needed to build up our flock again. Debbie went and bought 4 new chicks. We brought them home, made them as comfortable as any chick could hope--food, water, heatlamp, towel. One ingrate went and died overnight. The nerve! But the other three grew! When they were too large for the storage bin, we set up a dog crate in the coop and moved them out of the sewing room before the smell grew overpowering. Our theory was that the older chickens could get used to the 3 new chickens, and vice versa, without anyone being killed establishing pecking order. It seems to have worked, in part, because we now let the chickens all mingle together, and no one gets hurt. But if you look closely, they're NOT mingling. The four older chickens hang out together, and the three younger chickens hang out together, and they all live in the same building. But it's more like 2 small flocks in the same coop. I don't care. As long as they don't kill each other, and produce eggs, I'm OK with whatever social order they establish. Now if they would just PRODUCE EGGS. We expect them any day.