flying hens

[Alison]

Our flock is free-range in our large orchard. Last Jan 06 we lost 14 poultry to foxes during one day. No feathers, no noise. Only 4 were left. A neighbour later told us she had seen a vixen and 6 cubs in the copse along the road.

2 yrs before that we also lost many poultry in one day in Jan.
They seem safe enough at night, as they are in an ark and access is via a ladder. In any case, all our losses have been during the day - the day after the first losses, I even saw a fox outside the kitchen window with one of our hens in its mouth, at 10.00am, and I went yelling out. Couldn't save the hen, but we had no further losses till this year.

After this year's loss, we bought electric fencing and kept them in that until May or thereabouts.
We want to put them back into electric fencing for this winter, since it seems to be the danger time. They have been breeding frantically over the summer and we are back up to 18, 11 of which are quite small.

The problem is that most of them seem to be roosting in trees at night! I am thinking that my SO will probably have to stand on ladders and hand them down to me after their bedtime, and I will put them in the ark and hope they cotton on to it. That's if we can manage to find all of them at night-time, as last night we only located 5, so where are the other 6??

However, if they keep flying out of the electric netting, that's not going to be much use! Has anyone else had this problem? Do we have to clip their wings or something, as I wouldn't know where to start...
Alison.

[Arnie]

Hi Alison,

http://www.poultryscotland.co.uk/index.html

Try this site it give's you wing clipping information I have to admit it is something I might have to do at a later date, but I would be in need the help of someone who had already done it before

Hope this is of some help


Kevin

[Arnie]

Hi Alison,

I went to the web site and I could not find the page so I cut and pasted the lot over

Regards

Kevin
Sorry about this but this site does not show you the diagram so if you search the web, The first site comes up and hopefully it will show you the diagram you require, I hope this make sence

Kintaline Farm Plant and Poultry Centre Benderloch, OBAN, Argyll, PA37 1QS Scotland
Tel: 01631 720223 email: [email protected]
KALIYA'S WING CLIPPING INFORMATION
from sci.agriculture.poultry newsgroup

this is a big picture - 46 k but is a detailed pictorial description on wing clipping

[Chantal]

I tried clipping the wings on two of mine some years ago and it made not one bit of difference to their ability to get up trees. The don't actually fly to get up the try, they more jump and flap a bit and the lack of the flight feathers was no problem to them.

I eventually housed mine in a large, 6ft high run with pea netting over the top which has worked well for the past 7 years.

[John]

Hello Alison
Its quite easy to clip a hen's wings and painless for the hen, although they might be a bit miffed for a few minutes.
Hold the bird under your arm and gently open the wing which is nearest to your body. The flight feathers, the ones you need to trim off, will spread out from under the wing, where they are normally hidden. They are the long feathers at the front of the wing. Just cut them back with a pair of kitchen scissors. The usual advice is to just do one side so that when the bird tries to fly it goes over sideways.
Like Chantal says, sometimes it just doesn't make much difference. The lighter framed birds can be quite determined fliers however you trim them.

I use electric fencing to keep my birds off the veg patch. When it was vertical it wasn't very effective. Now I have tilted it over at an angle (about say 30deg from upright) towards the birds and it works far better. They seem disconcerted by the overhang on the fence and don't try to get over it.

John

[Myrkk]

We clip ours but found out that you do have to clip enough feathers. If you don't go far enough along the primary feathers then they can still fly, albeit in a lop-sided fashion.

Funnily enough after doing ours for 2 seasons we've been able to leave them be now and they don't even attempt flying [unless a goose has latched onto their tail feathers]

[Carole B.]

We've had the same problems with foxes coming into the garden and taking birds from under our noses but we haven't clipped the wings because we think it gives the birds a better chance if they can fly up out of trouble.That's the theory but the silly devils seem to forget they can fly when a fox is about and run around in circles on the ground instead.We get troubled in summer when the cubs are dispersing and are looking for easy prey.Some of ours roost in the trees and some go to the old outside loo (they're known as the 'Privy Council') which we can shut at night to prevent them coming down from roost too early in the morning which seems to be the prime danger point of the day.

[sally wright]

Dear Carole,
have the privy council been toilet trained. Do they roost on the loo with bums facing inwards so that cleaning is easy or do you have to have a fluffy mat on the floor to catch the misses?
Sorry but my imagination has been going wild all day thinking about your privy council. I expect the queen would get more sense out of them that out of our current crop of politicians.
Regards Sally Wright.