New behavior - watched chicken climb 8 foot wire fence

[thenalbachs]

I wish I had known what was about to happen so I could have gotten a video of it. One of my chickens just hopped up on the wire wall of their pen about three feet up and proceeded to climb the rest of the eight foot height by flapping non-stop for lift and walking up the wall foot over foot to the next piece of wire until it got to the top where it settled down to perch. It wasn't just residual inertia, it took about 10 to 15 seconds to climb the wall and looked hard, but the chicken seemed to know what it was doing and went in a straight line up.

Has anybody else ever seen or heard of this? I didn't know a chicken could climb a vertical surface this way.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I have seen it many times. It's usually a smart chicken doing it, and a lighter one.

 

[thenalbachs]

So probably not the whole flock then (have 18), just this particular one?

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

It does seem to be an individual thing in chickens. I had a whole clutch of muscovy ducklings climb a fence a time or two, but never a bunch of chickens doing it. Most chickens tend to fly up to one spot, and than the next. You will usually keep finding one outside the fence until you see them doing it and realize what it has been doing.

 

[centrarchid]

That behavior is called clambering. It is how birds can defeat fencing even with partially clipped wings. It is also thought by some to be how some non-avian . proto-avian dinosaurs likely made rapid ascents into a tree prior to development of true powered flight.

 

[aart]

Have read about it and then seen it done by 2 younger birds...glad I was there as one got foot caught in chicken wire and I had to free it.