4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[Rooharper]

Hello

 

I am seeking advice please.

 

Our chickens, Molly and Amber, have been with us since January and like your delivery man said, they have laid 2 eggs a days between them since Valentine's Day so are happy birds. They have a third of our garden as well as their run and are fenced in with chicken wire so they can roam during the day. However they have learned to escape over the wire - either by jumping up onto their omlet run roof or just trying their luck and scaling the 95cm high perimeter fence to get to the other side where indeed the grass is greener. I am chasing her back in so many times during the day as i want them to stay in their area to avoid my toddler son treading in their poo and them balding the rest of the garden and trashing the plants.

 

Is it usual that they can be so crazy to get more food - we refill their pellets every 2-4 days as required. we feed them kitchen s"Ooops, word censored!"s - leaves, leftover toast, etc too. Have we made them greedy hunter birds?!

 

We have tried trimming her wing too but she must just be leaping and flapping at an angle...

 

Any advice would be welcome - my neighbours think they live next door to one flew over the cuckoo's nezt when they hear me chasing Molly round the garden with my 2 year old son shouting 'Molly, in in, naughty chicken!'

anybody had the same problem and solved it?

Thank you

[Ain't Nobody Here]

Welcome to the forum . Unfortunately some chickens just seem to have that wanderlust . I had one myself . The only options really are to raise the height of the fence (more chickenwire perhaps?) or to somehow move their launchpad.

 

You may find as they get older they'll get heavier and less able to launch themselves. Fingers crossed .

 

(I don't imagine it's anything to do with what you're feeding them - they're just being nosey!)

[effingpot]

95cm seems like a low fence to me. Mine can jump higher than that (with an aiding flap). I have a 2M fence which they could get to the top of before I clipped their wings. Try razor wire around the top, guard dogs and a 24 x 7 watch?

 

Or maybe a slightly higher fence? Here is my fence ...