Do not clip their wings until their adult feathers are completely in!
This can be as early as 8 weeks old or you can wait up until they are 6 months old and roughly a full grown adult. The younger you clip them the faster they will adapt to this trait, meaning they won’t try to fly and fall, they will learn how to climb and hop more.
- Have one person hold your chicken, make sure they have both wings down and hold them with a good grip up against their body.
- When catching and holding your chickens, try to do so in a calm fashion so they don’t feel alarmed or threatened. This is easier to do if your chickens like you and don’t run away everytime you get near them. You want to hold them with a little strength so they don’t fly out of your arms or wiggle around and cause the one clipping to slip and cut something they’re not supposed to. You want to hold them with their wings down and then put one wing out at a time to clip.
- Only clip the primaries -take a pair of sharp scissors and where the coverts & primaries meet, move a couple inches out, and cut across there.
The hard part of the feather -the shaft is what allows blood flow, so watch for bleeding through these.
The primary wing feathers can grow back in after molting -reclip 6-8 weeks after molting -check to see when fully grown back out
Cutting 1 Wing or Both?
If you don’t want your chickens to fly at all –only clip one wing
If you just want your chickens to not fly high clip both wings, but cut them uneven.
Cutting their wings does not cause them any pain, if you do it right!
If you have netting or a cover over your run then I personally wouldn’t worry about clipping their wings, they can’t fly out and nothing can get it that they would need to fly away from.
They have the ability to fly as a response against predators, so if you take the risk of predators away, they don’t need their ability to fly.
