Random hens showed up on my property

[Brooks_]

Unless they're like, Ayam Cemanis or something.

Well yeah, but a finders fee would probably still be offered before litigation.

 

[NatJ]

I'm starting to think maybe I should just let them in the run and keep them. I have no idea who they belong to, and honestly I don't care enough to find out... I find it quite annoying that my neighbors make zero effort to keep their chickens out of my gardens.

What do you guys think?

I would think it's reasonable to let the hens join your flock, BUT:
If anyone comes to say "have you seen my missing hens?"
then I think you should ask what kind of hens, missing since when, and if the description/date match you should let the person have them back.

Since you say you honestly do not know who the owner is, there's only so much you can do even if you did want to return them.

 

[MissMonty]

We ended up with a random hen that just showed up. Most likely at this point if they've been staying on your property days the owner likely thinks they were killed by an animal, car, etc. So I'd bet they aren't even looking for them. Legally, you'd want to look into the laws and such for your state but I highly doubt someone who lets their chickens have free roam really are going to worry about a couple chickens. If we were talking a cow or something yeah that'd be a totally different story.

Now just taking the chickens is NOT going to solve your problem tho. Most likely the neighbor will replace the chickens and you'll still have visitors from time to time bringing in the risk of disease. I'd probably be more inclined to figure out who the owners are and return them. Go to the door and be a good neighbor. Often it'll give them the idea (although you are being very nice) that you don't want them on your property and maybe they'll start looking into proper containment options

 

[sourland]

I would think it's reasonable to let the hens join your flock, BUT:
If anyone comes to say "have you seen my missing hens?"
then I think you should ask what kind of hens, missing since when, and if the description/date match you should let the person have them back.

Since you say you honestly do not know who the owner is, there's only so much you can do even if you did want to return them.

This is the common sense solution.

 

[Mrs. K]

Like how is someone going to identify her or his chicken?

 

[docdubz]

I looked into it. The state is open range with the caveat of counties can enact closed range laws but in order to find out if your county did so you either need to go through all of your counties minutes or pay some lawyer that compiled a lot of the information and hope your county is in the list that they are selling. It's a bit of a moot point now, however, because the day after I posted this thread those two hens stopped coming around after being constant fixtures next to my run for the past 2-3 weeks.

What an annoyance though. I have two neighbors that keep decent sized flocks and make no effort to contain them. It's the main reason that I don't let my birds free range, which is becoming untenable because a flock of 36 birds goes through feed really fast. I stopped keeping track but a 50lb bag of pellets lasts me about 3, maybe 3 and a half days.