Farm Blog

Its been wet weather this week and have even had a few snow showers and snow flurries today, so since no field work can be done we moved the chickens into their winter home in the barn. They will be living in their deep and I do mean deep bedding. Sharon had a truck deliver the wood shaving bedding last week and it is feet deep throughout the barn. When we moved the chickens into the barn we pulled the chicken mobile down to the barn and "guided" them in. It didn't take too long and we noticed that there were some chickens out. We thought maybe they were getting out of their outside areas that are a combination of woven-wire, cattle panel, and chicken wire, but as we were eating lunch I noticed some chickens up on the inside walls. Closer inspection revealed that they were jumping from their perches to the walls, then walking around on the walls and flying down. So we scrounged around the farm and found more chicken wire and some lattice and strategically mounted the wire and lattice so that they can't easily make it from purchase to the tops of the walls. I have to admit that we tried cutting the wing feathers on one of the chickens. We noticed 2 things. 1. You can't tell that you have clipped the wings when looking at the chicken so it would be nearly impossible to catch and clip all of the chickens without some serious sorting. 2. A clipped chicken can't flight at all and most egg laying chickens can fly really well. Once clipped they can't even make a 12" flight up. So after the first chicken we didn't do any others and instead added the wire and lattice. I guess we learned a little something anyway...