Older hens chasing the young flock

I have recently merger my older flock with the littles. The older is around 9 months old and the littles are 5 months old. My older 6 older girls are chasing the 10 younger hens and rooster constantly not letting them inside the coop. Will they ever stop?

Carrie Riebow wrote:I have recently merger my older flock with the littles. The older is around 9 months old and the littles are 5 months old. My older 6 older girls are chasing the 10 younger hens and rooster constantly not letting them inside the coop. Will they ever stop?

Eventually, they are just establishing the pecking order (hence the name). Sheep and other livestock do it as well.

Had the two flocks been near one another for a while before the merge?  How long have they been chasing the young ones away?  

I would think they would settle down after a few days.

Please keep a close eye on them. Chickens can gang up on whoever they decide is the "bottom" chicken and actually hurt her. Do they have more than one feeder, so the older girls can't do "denial of food'?
Normally when I'm trying to integrate birds, I start at bedtime when it's almost dark. They'll still squabble in the morning to set the pecking order, but if they've already spent the night together, it seems to help.

I merged my two flocks about a month ago. They had been close enough to see and talk to each other all summer, and in the evenings they'd be allowed loose in the yard for a couple hours while I watched.

The majority of the chasing and bullying were being done by specific birds. Once those were culled, the rest got along better. I'd been planning to cull some anyway, so this wasn't a problem.

There was one I didn't want to cull, who kept trying to chase the younger ones away. When the flocks were combined, she got locked in a cat carrier for 4 days, with the carrier set inside the coop with the others. Once a day I'd let her out to see if she was ready to get along. It took a while, but she figured it out. It was the same process I'd had to use to incorporate her into the flock to begin with, as she was a rescue who I found wandering the streets.

Chickens are territorial. It takes a while for them to accept new flockmates.

I once had a flock of 9 hens decide they hated 1 hen, even though they'd lived together for years.  Sometimes chickens do strange things that appear to be beyond 'pecking order'.  It can definitely be more pronounced when there's an age gap.  It's useful to have a secondary place for the outcasts to take refuge.  Let them get away and still be safe and dry.  

My flock proliferated from like 12 chickens to 100 chickens this year and it's driven them into a few distinct flocks.  The younger ones generally stay away from the older ones and hang out in different areas of the farm.  The eldest rooster (whose brothers have been eaten but he's staying as a back-up roo) has fully joined the original flock now and is peaceful with the 2 established roosters of that mature flock.  

Though I don't have any fighting/bloodshed, the established flock does like to bully the younger generation away from 'home turf' immediately around the coop.  I'm sure once they reach full adulthood (those that aren't butchered first...), the flock will re-merge and re-shuffle.  

Just another day of chicken business!  My opinion is it's all just part of their customs and MOs, unless they're drawing blood on each other.  I don't tolerate violent birds, they usually perpetuate violence and are more of a pain that they're worth.