TIL: Fence top roller bars - do they keep chickens in?

[Mother of Chaos]

Clip the flight feathers on one of her wings. It'll throw her off balance and keep her from going up and over. Hopefully, by the time she grows them back (her next hard molt,) she'll be out of the habit. If not, it's time to break out the scissors again!
Also - try putting in a swing, it may be just enough of a boredom breaker to satisfy her fidgets. They're easy to make. Just suspend a perch using nylon rope or clothesline cord (do they even make that stuff anymore? I'm still using my stash!) Chain can snag toes and cotton/natural fiber rope holds yuckies. Nylon is easily washed and can be bleached.

Thanks for the ideas! It will probably have to get a whole lot worse (flying off the property) before I could bring myself to clip wings, but I know that sometimes it’s all that’s left.

 

[perkolator]

I was just re-reading an old thread, and spotted this post:

If you want it in context, it is on page two of this thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/alternative-to-clipping-wings.1197805/

The idea is similar to the roller bar, but uses a thin string (easier & cheaper to put up, and harder for chickens to see which means it's harder for them to learn ways around it.)

I did this to my extended run fencing because of one particular escape artist. Clipping wings wasn't an option for me, so they can better escape predators if they have to. I used mason string to make two lines above the top of the 5ft fence, the top wire was over 6ft. Worked for a little while...then she decided to either just jump/fly straight over the top, and then graduated to jump/fly onto the coop roof at over 7ft high to escape. Then we had losses inside the run due to owl and bobcat, so I enclosed the whole top of the run with bamboo poles and chicken wire. Nothing has gotten in or out with this revision.

I did the same thing to the top of our property fence, for the deer who were getting over a section that was only 6ft fence. That did seem to work for deer for almost 2yrs until I replaced the section with 8ft Tenax deer fence

FYI chickens can somehow balance on a single wire. I've witnessed it with multiple chickens when they go to my grape vines and balance on the trellis wires that are only like 14ga thick