Flying Chickens
Before
After Clipping
Due to a series of escapees over the past few days, I decided that wing clipping was in order. It is not nearly as bad as it sounds.
There are 10 flight feathers hidden below the coloured layer of feathers, which you could see when they are fanned out. There is even a colour difference to help with the scissors line, although you wouldn’t know it from my crooked cut. It is painless. If you hold the feathers up to the light, you will see where the blood vessels start in the shafts of the feathers. Just stay on the outside of this area. The wings need to be clipped again each time the chicken moults. Moulting usually occurs once a year in the autumn. It is a natural process, designed by nature to maintain the birds’ ability to escape enemies by flight and to provide greater protection against cold winters.
Normally you would only do one wing to off-balance the bird, which discourages flying over fences. Young Sally required both to be done. The grass always looked greener on the other side to her. The first two birds were done with kitchen shears. I switched to well-sharpened garden clippers and found that they worked much better. The picture on the right shows how much the feathers were cut back. I’m very messy!