Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Chicken Wings



Allow me to introduce you to our chicken coop. Sure it may not have a living roof (yet), but at least it no longer has "chicas" spray painted across the door. It has also been expanded now so the fenced in area which never quite made sense serves a purpose. It gives the girls a little place to scratch and peck to their little hearts content. This means no more poop all over the patio, chickens flying onto the table during meals or tomatoes getting ripped to pieces by ravenous chickens!




On a side note. Did you know that chickens are attracted to the color red? This seems like a interesting quirk until they are eating your beautiful ripe tomatoes or chase you around the yard trying to peck your freshly painted toes!






Once the girls were granted access to their new run, it quickly became apparent that a 3 foot fence was not tall enough to keep them inside. Jeff finally decided that he needed to clip some wings to keep the ladies in. He clipped Stinky first. She is the alpha of the group, and he clipped the one set of flight feathers right before his lunch break ended (this might seem obvious, but just in case, only clip one wing. If you clip both they will still be able to fly). He went back inside figuring he'd do the rest after work, but to his surprise, no chickens left the pen for the rest of the day. Apparently, without stinky to lead the way, the other chickens were perfectly content to stay inside their pen. So if you ever find yourself with lots of chickens but little time, just clip the alpha and your task is done!
unclipped clipped

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

I thought this was going to be how you made chicken wings for dinner out of your chickens and I was really sad... and then I read the whole thing and I was ok haha

Theresa said...

We clipped the one side and it does keep them out of the yard when in the pasture, however they can still flap high enough to get a hold on the three foot chicken wire fence in the yard and pull themselves up and over with thier toes. I read a blog of a woman who advocates cutting both wings back very drastically to stop all attempts at flight....we're going to try it and will let you know if it keeps them off the three foot chicken wire fence!!