Older chickens prevent younger ones from entering the coop

[rosemarythyme]

Maybe, if they all grew up together, but integration work much better with extra space.

As I said, they only sleep and lay in the coop so it is plenty of space.

Unfortunately, your birds disagree with you. The older ones are hogging the space, even if it wasn't initially theirs.

Might look into altering the coops even more and turning the entire thing into one giant coop, which includes eating up the bit of run space on the right side along with the space underneath. That'll give you about as much overall floor space as you'd need for 7 chickens, if my math is correct.

 

[3KillerBs]

As I said, they only sleep and lay in the coop so it is plenty of space. They have a very large fenced in run that they spend all day in. The area under the coop is a very small portion of the run. The only time any of them are ever in the coop is at night or briefly when laying.

The older ones were put into the pen/coop that the younger ones were in, not the other way around.

Chicken society can be brutal. They don't share scarce resources and might makes right.