Ok, so a month ago I was given 25 laying hens from a friend that are 18 months old (I rehomed 8 hens to another friend). I already had a small flock of (23 total) 18 week and 10 week pullets at the time. I had no way to quarantine the birds so I bathed all the new birds and put them all together with the younger ones. So my flock is 40 birds in a 420 square foot run and coop. I have not seen any aggression between the flock as they worked out their new pecking order. All the older hens were laying and never stopped laying. My leghorns started laying last week. Yesterday I noticed one of the older hens was on top of another of the older hens pecking it quite viciously. I went to break it up and noticed that two of my young leghorns were bledding from comb and they were starting to be attacked by two particular Barred Rock hens. I have noticed that several of the BR hens seem to be more b!tchy than the rest and really assert their dominance over the rest of the flock to the point of being mean. I know that the pecking order is a social thing that is always changing and active but it seems that these two particular BR hens are overly aggressive. Has any one ever dealt with this kind of agression and should I be ready to cull them (which I have no problem in doing)?
