violent chicken-any suggestions?

[Michele]

I have 6 chickens

3 are 48 weeks old and good layers: 2 white leghorn, 1 barred rock

3 are 23 weeks old and laying for the past week: 2 silver Ameraucanas, 1 cuckoo maran

They have been separated by a removable door , the 3 older in a pen with the nesting boxes.

Each day I have let all 6 out together to forage in the backyard.

some pecking order events occurred, and mostly they stayed to their age groups.

now that all 6 are laying, I want them to be together in the pen, with the door removed between the 2 areas.  it is not going well.  the barred rock is violent towards the youngsters, chasing them into corners and pulling out feathers.  I've tried several tactics (introducing the youngsters at night, changing combinations of chickens, isolating the barred rock), but at the moment, I have separated them, which means that the youngsters are laying on the ground in the middle of their part of the pen.

Any suggestions?

[Juanita Atkin-Cotten]

I had a flock of 7 birds and recently introduced 4 more that were about 7 weeks old. I had a small coop built (about the size of a dog house) and fenced it off so that the big girls could see the younger ones, but not get to them. It has been about 3 weeks. My original 7 free range all day, so in the mornings, I have been opening the "baby area" and letting them free range with the others. It is just a normal size back yard, but they seem to be getting along just fine. They still sleep separately, but range during the day together.
Them having their own coop seemed to make a big difference, even though it is too small to last forever. My original group was 4 RR's and I intro'd 3 new birds that were about three months old, but they all shared the same space. The RR's really were not happy with that and squawked all night for days & picked on the smaller birds quite a bit. But I am not seeing that with this new group. The newbie’s also still have a separate food and water area than the older girls.