Do the chicks access their feeding station through small portals the the adults can't fit through? You may have just rigged up a "panic room" for them!
Many of us merge chicks into the adult population in this fashion. It's important that the chicks have an area where they can't be harassed by the adults. Many chicks find it difficult, at best, to get enough to eat for normal growth, let alone being picked on. When I remodeled my run last year, I included a grow-out pen that has 5"x7" portals where the chicks may come and go put the pen is otherwise a sanctuary for the small ones. Then once they're the same size, the pen is opened and becomes part of the larger run.
My first "panic room" was a small enclosure such as yours, but since I was raising chicks every other spring, I decided it was time to make something more functional. You would not believe the evolutions my coop and runs have gone through in seven years of having chickens. It's gone from a 4'x4' coop with a 6'x8' run to a 400 sq ft edifice! Extreme chicken math!
Many of us merge chicks into the adult population in this fashion. It's important that the chicks have an area where they can't be harassed by the adults. Many chicks find it difficult, at best, to get enough to eat for normal growth, let alone being picked on. When I remodeled my run last year, I included a grow-out pen that has 5"x7" portals where the chicks may come and go put the pen is otherwise a sanctuary for the small ones. Then once they're the same size, the pen is opened and becomes part of the larger run.
My first "panic room" was a small enclosure such as yours, but since I was raising chicks every other spring, I decided it was time to make something more functional. You would not believe the evolutions my coop and runs have gone through in seven years of having chickens. It's gone from a 4'x4' coop with a 6'x8' run to a 400 sq ft edifice! Extreme chicken math!
