Welcoming Alice and Wendy

Alice and Wendy arrived yesterday morning. I had no idea how they should be settled in. Would they be like dogs, would they try to run away, could they wander off and get lost. To be safe I put them in their temporary pen, our old chook house, just to let them have time to settle down and get a sense of their new surrounds. About lunchtime they were looking really calm, they had been wandering around the pen eating grass, digging, looking for bugs and had eaten some of their food and had water. I figured that was the sign that they had accepted their move, so we opened the door and let them out to free range around the garden. My other girls were already wandering around, but hadn't paid any particular attention to these new arrivals other than a brief glance through the cage. Things were a little different once they were out however. Alice and Wendy are much bigger than any of the other girls and were not in a socialable mood at all. Every time one of the girls came anywhere near them they puffed up and chased them away. I expected that there would be some confrontation, as the newcomers would mean a shuffle of the groups heirachy, but after the first few tries, the two camps remained separated. As I wanted to ensure they had sorted the bickering before they were penned together they spent the night separated as well. Today they all spent the day in the garden, there were a couple of small altercations, but still no unity. So tonight we are still in two separate chook houses and I'm wondering if there will ever be harmony in the garden again.
If you've integrated new chickens with existing I'd love to hear how you did it, any suggestions at all are very very welcome.

Alice and Wendy settling in the old chook pen.

Alice would only lay in a special box before, but she's taken to the lawn mower catcher already. Two eggs waiting for us there this morning.