Angst- to clip wings or not?

[traceyj]

I'm firmly against clipping my chickens wings, but one of my girls flew over the 9' high fence today. Luckily she was very surprised and walked back to me right away to go back in the run, but now I'm worried what might have happened if I hasn't been right there feeding/defrosting their water.
So do I clip their wings or not? Putting a roof over the run isn't really feasible because of size/snowfall/trees

 

[BantamLover21]

I would probably clip their wings. You don't want chickens to escape outside, where they become very vulnerable to predators.

 

[traceyj]

That's it, we have black bears, foxes and cougars here, I've seen them!
Don't want to hurt them tho!

 

[Katbird01]

Could you maybe just run some strands of wire across the top? I'm not sure if that would work or not. I'm still new to this chicken thing. Mine are still in a temporary pen and fly out regularly. They hang around the coop though so it's not hard to round em back up.

 

[Chickenguy9]

From what I understand there are two types of "clipping a wing" one type is painful and permanently stops a bird from flying dont quote me but I think this type is called pinioning. (feel free to correct me) This is where part of the actual wing is removed. The other type is pain-free and temporary(lasting a few months to a year depending on the individual chicken.) This is where you would simply cut the flight feathers from one wing. My uncle does this to his chickens and they arnt bothered at all. I found this too. This is the way I would go with it, it doesn't hurt the chickens and will stop any unwanted flying.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-to-clip-trim-the-wings-of-your-chicken-to-prevent-flight

 

[traceyj]

Thanks, I'm still nervous of hurting them!

 

[Hokum Coco]

.
So do I clip their wings or not?

am


My run is about 4 ft high. If you clip the feathers on one wing of each bird it will help.

Make sure there is no blood in the shaft of the feather before you clip or your bird may bleed to death.

On some birds you may even have to clip a few secondary flight feathers.

One wing throws the bird off balance and is more effective than trimming equal amounts off both wings.