How young can you clip chickens' wings?

[Animalfisherwoman]

One of my 14 week old pullets almost made it over the backyard fence. Is this too early to clip the wings of her and her sisters (same age roughly), and if not, which feathers do you clip and how far back?

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Any time after the first adult plumage is set is a good time to trim flight feathers. The juvenile plumage comes and goes so fast that it isn't really helpful to clip wing feathers until they are fully grown and remember that immature feathers are called blood feathers for a very important reason. These feathers are directly plumbed into your chickens circulation system are filled with fresh blood so you really don't want to clip these feathers. I hope this helps.

 

[Mosey2003]

14 weeks should be fine. It's best to start out clipping only one wing per bird, this unbalances them when they try to fly. I clip the longer feathers to the length of the shorter feathers, you can see those if you open the wing and look at the underside.