Show me your set up for smaller chickens to hide from the big meanie

[Justicedog]

I’ve got 5-3 year old and 4 - 14 1/2 week olds. They’ve been in a coop with plastic netting fencing separating them for 2 months. The bigs come thru to the littles side thru the nesting boxes because apparently the nesting boxes on their side aren’t good enough. The littles can get thru out to the run and have seemed fine there, so I’m thinking of opening up more ways for the littles to get out to the run. But I want them to have places to hide. They’re almost as big as the bigs so I’m having difficulty envisioning places they can go that the bigs cannot.

 

[DemeterAD9]

I got creative with some sticks and made an excluder of sorts to keep the older birds from getting to the chicks.

I’m told wooden pallets work too. But seeing as your youngsters are about the same size as the older girls you may just have to let them go at it but stay around as a referee to make sure they don’t get too bullied. It only took a couple days for things to settle down but the ages of my birds were about 12 weeks and 4 weeks olds.

 

[rosemarythyme]

They’re almost as big as the bigs so I’m having difficulty envisioning places they can go that the bigs cannot.

Yeah, it's not going to work how you think. The idea of doing chick escape/hiding zones is to take advantage of their much smaller size and fleetfootedness... they're too big by around 8 weeks of age, depending on the opening sizes.

At this point you need to integrate them more like adults.