So 12 birds total?
Would you post a pic of your coop(inside and out) and your run?
No, 22 chickens total. I had 24 but 2 turned out to be roosters and they are not in with the girls now so 22 in the main coop. I will get a picture and post tomorrow if I am able.
Your run is a bit tight, but overall, your total space looks adequate. If you have not done so, give them lots of multi height opportunities in coop AND run. Hay bales stacked pyramid fashion with a tunnel between the 2 bottom bales (I put a piece of plywood so there's no worry about a bale collapse.) An old card table, 2 pallets A framed together make good stress buster options. Also, break open a bale of hay for them, turn their run into a deep composting litter if you have not yet done so, give them a mountain of leaves or weeds to shuffle and munch their way through. Busy chickens don't have as much time to be aggressive.
I will definitely be doing many of the things that you suggested, thank you.
I have more bad news. After posting my earlier reply, I decided to go back and check on the girls because I have been worrying about this situation. I found all 6 of the black chickens now have about a 1"x 1" area of their feathers pecked out at the lowest part of their back just before where the tail feathers start and 4 of them have good size holes and were bleeding pretty good!! The holes are pretty bad, but I am sure they would heal if left alone. But I could not believe it, this happened since yesterday and I had never noticed the black chickens being picked on. Could it be since I removed the 3 Ameraucanas that were on the lowest pecking order and were getting picked on, they decided to start with the next ones in line? It is still just the laying hens doing it, I caught them doing it when I was up there and they even had blood on their beaks and feathers. Seems once the chickens getting pecked on started bleeding they were then pecked by the other chickens but not aggressively, more like the way chickens will do when they see anything, but it is mainly the 2 laying hens and the 2 laying hens are not top of the pecking order themselves, they won't mess with the RIRs that are. I spent the entire evening trying to separate these chickens. I applied blu-kote to all the wounds and put the 6 black chickens in a temporary separate place together for now and then THEY started pecking at each others wounds even with the blu-kote and I coated them very well, the blu-kote completely blended in with their black feathers but they still were pecking at each others backs. So now I have the 3 Ameraucanas in their own temp. place, I have had to remove both roosters and put them each in their own places, and now have the 6 black chickens in their own temp. place. All of the chickens I am separating are very stressed now and not happy while all that is left in the main coop are the RIRs, Isa Browns, and the 3 columbia rock and they seem more content. After removing all these chickens, the laying hens were not really attacking any of the other chickens, of course this might change tomorrow since removing the black chickens, but the laying hens have been leaving the other RIRs,ISA, and columbia rocks alone for the most part, but they weren't messing with the black chickens either until I removed the 3 Ameraucanas. I am CLUELESS as I have never owned chickens before and up until this, I have had an easy experience with these chickens.
I was enjoying getting our first eggs from the 2 laying hens last week and this week, no other chickens are laying yet, we were so excited that finally after all our hard work building them a nice coop and taking care of them, to finally reap the reward we were looking forward to, but this is crazy. I can't make any more temp. places for these chickens now and will have to as soon as possible build a new coop, but how many since I can't put all of these chickens I am separating together? These chickens are friendly to us, not aggressive to us, comes to us, and like I said, up until last week when the 2 hens started laying we had no issues at all with them with each other either, ever. Advice or help?? At this point, I am afraid that even if I separated the 2 laying hens, if more of the girls start laying the same thing will continue too.
