The caged bird still sings
Clipping the chicken's wings
The second night we had our new chickens, Alicia went out to close the coop door and keep them safe from predators. They still hadn’t quite figured out their new home, so two of them were sitting on the floor, rather than the nice nesting boxes I had built for them. The other two were nowhere to be seen, but the peeping of young chickens was coming from somewhere. Following her ears, Alicia found two of them roosting on top of the 6-foot fence.
When there’s dirty work to be done — in this case wing-clipping — it is passed on to me. The next day around lunchtime, I rounded up the chickens one by one and clipped off the big feathers from one of their wings. I was able to walk up and just grab the first one, but by the time I got to chicken #4, she gave me a real run for my money. They get really smart about using the chicken coop to hide under, around, and through. Plus they’re pretty quick when they want to be.
The theory is that clipping only one wing throws off their balance so they can’t fly straight, and thus, can’t “fly the coop.” When the first chicken hopped off my lap after her wing-clipping, she gave a couple big flaps and landed with a thud on her side on the ground, so I think it worked.
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