Chicks in coop with old flock, ok, but when one gets in the run...

[jobear]

We put in 6, 6-week old chicks with our existing year-old flock of 8 hens and they were separated for 2 weeks while in the coop together. Then, because we only have one coop and the chicks were getting pretty big, we integrated them together. The chicks stay in the coop...but the door is open for the larger hens to go out into the run. In the coop the pecking occurs, but with 6 chicks and usually only one hen doing the pecking at a time...they can hold their own. But periodically, one chick will go out into the run and with all the hens out there...they will all go after the one chick....it eventually somehow getting out somewhere, or getting stuck in the chicken wire and luckily...I've always been around to save it. They seem to stop pecking it when it stops moving and gets stuck or such.
Any suggestions?
Do I need to separate them again? I cannot shut the hens out of the coop...
thanks!!

 

[midget_farms]

Just let them work it out. They will be OK in the end.

Make sure the chick has plenty of room to run away. When she is a little bigger and the other chicks go outside there will be less pecking.

 

[MTMom]

I just went through a similar transition. I had 7 older girls and then a friend gave me 17 more babies!! What I did that seemed to work pretty well for a few weeks was to section off a corner of my coup with some chicken wire and then I made 2 small holes on the bottom so that the babies could get to their food and water and safe away from the big girls and back out when they wanted to, but the big ones couldn't get in. Before this, not only did I have issues with some pecking, but the big birds wouldn't let the little ones eat! Now that the babies are a lot bigger, they are all doing fine together.