Mean hen

[Kbake]

I could use a little help with a rude hen. I’m assuming she is alpha cause all the others coward to her, but she is the smallest and fiercest. She definitely hates my RIR. If she goes in the coop and they are in ANY box, she rips them out by the back of their necks! She pecks at others and chases them out of the coop. I usually scoop her up when she does this to try and discourage this behavior. She use to be my curious girl that was always into whatever I was doing, now she’s just rude.
Quick chicken background - I have 12 chickens and 1 rooster. All I got together in March 2023. They have a 15x25 foot run with vertical perches and an overEZ coop - large. They get free range time when I’m home and the dogs are gonna be in the house for a bit.

 

[DonyaQuick]

If you got them as chicks (vs started pullet or adults) back in March then it may be a bit early for this, but it sounds like the starting-to-go-broody behavior I get form one of my hens - also my smallest hen strangely enough. She's half the size of my others. First time she went broody was at about 1yr old and I let her hatch then by moving her to nest box in the house, away from the flock. Whenever this little hen of mine first gets broody thoughts, she wants the entire coop to herself and will attack hens twice her size that so much as peek into the coop door when she's in one of those moods. When I caught her doing that this year, the timing wasn't right for me to let her hatch anything so I manually pulled her out of there and put her out in the run with everyone else and added some kind of foraging distraction to keep her busy. With some repetition removing her throughout the day, things always settled back to normal.

 

[Kbake]

If you got them as chicks (vs started pullet or adults) back in March then it may be a bit early for this, but it sounds like the starting-to-go-broody behavior I get form one of my hens - also my smallest hen strangely enough. She's half the size of my others. First time she went broody was at about 1yr old and I let her hatch then by moving her to nest box in the house, away from the flock. Whenever this little hen of mine first gets broody thoughts, she wants the entire coop to herself and will attack hens twice her size that so much as peek into the coop door when she's in one of those moods. When I caught her doing that this year, the timing wasn't right for me to let her hatch anything so I manually pulled her out of there and put her out in the run with everyone else and added some kind of foraging distraction to keep her busy. With some repetition removing her throughout the day, things always settled back to normal.

Of course, after typing this she let one of the Reds in the nesting box with her. that was quite the surprise! I’m wondering if she just gets mean and wants privacy when she needs to lay an egg. Like “everyone out! I need to lay an egg!!!”