How high can they fly??

[Morgan7782]

One other thing to consider. Are there any 'steps' around? My chickens will fly to a bench in our backyard and eye the roof (never tried it though). Or if I leave the garbage bin right near the fence they will be out in a hurry. So they WILL use tools to get up places lol!

 

[Annabella]

Morgan that's a good point - mine used the rubbish bin I use to store their food in to scale the divider fence, and also the roof of their coop when I had it too close to the fence line. Sneaky hens!

 

[TwilightMom]

My mom's RlR almost made it to the roof from a chair. She is just three mos old.

 

[lillypug]

My Old English Games can fly extremely well along with the few Sebrights I have. My bigger bodied/large fowl breeds and feather footed breeds can't fly as well.

 

[roosterroost]

We have 2 Ameraucana, 1 Buff Orpington bantam, hubby wants RIR at some point. We had them out in the yard free-ranging tonight, and they seemed much more interested in exploring than flying. Good point about using other objects to work themselved out of the yard....will keep my eyes peeled. I don't plan to let them free-range without one of us in the yard to keep an eye out; we do have a few cats in the neighborhood. Thanks for the input...

 

[woodmort]

Quote:
Yeah, when I put in the fencing around my yard we used heavy cross beams to tension it--see pic on my BYC Page. Since we used livestock fencing the mesh gets larger the higher up the fence--my birds found they could fly up to the cross beams and then fit through the fence. I had to add some netting along each beam to keep them in.

 

[MiniBeesKnees]

Oddly, my Seabrights stay in the yard as do my D'Uccles. But the Old English are real wanderers. All are Bantys. My four foot fence all around my property is no deterrent. If they feel like it they will fly up to my house roof...two stories. I don't want to clip wings either. Fortunately I live in a very rural, heavily wooded area without many neighbors. They sometimes do it in stages like flying to the top of the covered runs, or to a fence post first...but sometimes I let them out and they will fly all the way from the coop door in a straight line over the fence, and into the woods...about 80 feet. It is not uncommon for them to be flying ten feet up in the air.

 

[Kedreeva]

CAN- probably. WANT TO- that's up to you to discourage the thought with food, water, warmth, and safety. Ours all hang around the barn eating flies the horses collect and haven't given a second glance to neighboring properties- and we don't even have a fence. The ducks don't even want to go to the big pond at the back of the property (we've booted them there several times but they always run back) because they can be fat and lazy and eat all the food up front near the barn.