Norwegian Jaerhon>>>>Clipping wings????

[LindsaySinai]

My Norwegian Jaerhon's are a bit too flighty for my taste. They're only a few months old and they're already getting into everything. I have planter boxes for my garden that I wrap w/ chicken wire and I just watched them fly right over the four feet and start grazing. It's never been an issue w/ any of the others. I ran out there to scare them away and they flew 10 ft in the air onto the older hens coop. At night they decided they no longer want to sleep in the coop and instead perch on top. This went on for a week and now all the others have joined so I have to go out there every evening and attempt to catch all 6 before they jump off and run like crazy though the yard. So...can I clip their wings?? I'm guessing the next step is them escaping my yard and I don't live in a very chicken friendly area.

 

[Michael OShay]

You can certainly clip their winds. You only need to clip the first ten, large primary flight feathers of one wing, which will leave them unbalanced so that they cannot fly. If you've never clipped a chicken's wing before just be careful that you cut the feathers at the right length; too short and you could injure the chicken, too long and your clipping is worthless. If you look underneath your chickens' wings you will be able to see a dark shading in the shaft of the feathers. You do not want to cut through a feather in this dark area as, not only is it painful for the bird, but the injury could become infected. Where the feather's shaft is white you are safe to cut as the level of blood flowing to that area has receded.

 

[LindsaySinai]

Thank you! One got out the night I wrote that and I clipped them all. Then yesterday evening another on disappeared and didn't come back til the morning. I'm going to check them again today and see if I left them too long.