Chicken bald back

[CatieB]

I have been trying to confine the girls to a fenced off area to preserve my garden and stop my son walking chicken poo through the house. However the other day I then found the girls the other side of a 6 ft fence!!! Unless there is some secret way through which I'm unaware of they must have flown.

 

SO I decided to wing clip (I had been reluctant before because I thought it would give them some safety in case Mr Fox was around) however I'm still finding them on my patio and that means they are getting over a fence that is just over waist height!! Is that usual or have I not clipped enough - if properly clipped how high can they fly?

 

Thanks in advance

[Tricky]

I don't think its a case of chickens flying, its just that they use thier wings to assist them in the jump!!

if they were atheletes they would be banned from the high jump

 

Clipping wings will only limit them slightly. Make sure there are no platforms near fences to assit them which you probably have already done.

That being the case you will have to consider raisng the height of your fence until they get used to being in their area. It sounds like they have previously had access to the area you are now trying to keep them out of which they clearly are not happy about. If you can keep them in their new area they will in time get used to it and stop trying to "escape"

[Space Chick]

Some girls are more eager than others. I think it depends on their motivations too

 

I have some girls (in particular Rose) who will try mission impossible style manoeuvres to get into my fenced and netted off veg patches

 

I agree with Tricky, they will use whatever they can as a platform to assist their jump, watch them to find out how they do it, then you can work out where the weakness is to solve it.

 

Good luck, they are cunning are chickens

[majuka]

The heighest I've ever seen our girls get is about 4 ft. They don't have their wings clipped and they are ex battery girls so are middle aged anyway so I suppose a young, healthy hen could get pretty high if they tried hard enough!

[Guest]

My Marsh Daisy's are the worse they can get over 7ft !

Just make sure there is nothing they can jump on.

But doubt there is a way unless you build a WIR to stop them.

[Burtie14]

Our chickens can probably jump about 3ft at best - they're all much more a 'ladder' type of girl... To actually get enough purchase on a jump to get to 6ft or so would be very impressive. Also, mine are petrified of jumping down from any sort of height. Our top perch is probably just under 5ft, and they'd never have the nerve to jump straight down from it. In my own (limited) experience, I'd say they might just be finding another way through... sneaky blooming chickens.

[Lavenders_Blue]

Any chance they are getting under the fence you have created?

 

We had a phase when we kept finding the girls on the wrong side of the fence and assumed they were going over... until we spotted the minute gap where they had wriggled under (they don't need much space ). Now the fence is all tent pegged down!

[Roobaloo]

My girls both have their wings clipped and have jumped (from the ground) about 4ft high...

 

...bit of a surprise as the thing they were trying to jump on was me!!

[Patricia W]

Did you clip just one wing? The idea is to unbalance them so they can't do a harrier jet jump.

 

Tricia

[CatieB]

Hello thanks for all the replies.

 

Yes we did only clip one wing and having had a good look round I think they are using a plant pot near the little fence to jump over so we need to something about that. However still purplexed about the 6 foot fence pre wing clipping - defo nothing anywhere near that and no holes underneath!!

 

Maybe I should start chicken olympics