Clipping Chicken Wings

One of the things I don't like about backyard homesteading is that I have to clip my chickens wings. They don't like it and I always feel bad doing it. I know if doesn't hurt them, but I still feel a bit guilty putting them through it. We try to make is as stress free as possible.

The reason we clip our chickens wings is to keep them from flying on top of something in the yard and then flying over the fence into a neighbors yard...or worse over the back fence into the high school parking lot.

That could be interesting on a busy school morning watching a bunch of high schoolers help me wrangle a stray chicken back into my yard. Let's hope it never happens.

Clipping wings really isn't hard and only takes a couple of minutes. Honestly the hardest part was getting them all caught and into their pen so we could release each one back into the yard after they were finished.

We decided to get out a bucket if oats. Most of them fell for it and walked right into the pen and happily munched on oats. All except 2. We managed to catch one without too much trouble, but the last one had figured out what was going on and RAN.

You should have seen us chasing the poor thing all over the yard in the 90+ degree heat. Our toddler thought it was hilarious. We did eventually catch her, but not before Roger and I were both dripping in sweat.

To get started you need to try and get the chicken as calm as possible. Then spread out her wing like this. The feathers you are cutting are the long flight feathers.

Only clip ONE  wing per bird. This will throw off their balance when they try to fly. If you clip both wings they won't be able to fly, but there is always that one stubborn one who manages to fly a bit more then the rest. Save yourself the headache and only clip one wing.

Make sure you have a good, sharp pair of scissors. Clip just the flight feathers being very careful not to hurt the chicken by clipping too close and cutting into bone. They usually hold pretty still for this.

This is what it should look like when you are finished. And that is all there is to it. 

Now off to clean the coop while everyone is off catching bugs...well I didn't clean it, the hubby did.