Alternative to Clipping Wings?

[triplepurpose]

I have a neat little book called "Poultry" by Hugh Piper, published in 1877, part of modest collection of historical works on chicken keeping that i enjoy flipping through. Occasionally i also find interesting practical ideas.

In this case I came across a brief discription of a technique used to keep birds from flying over lower fences, "by stripping the vanes or side shoots from the first-flight feathers of one wing... which will effectively prevent the bird from flying. This method answers much better than clipping the quills of each wing, as the cut points are liable to inflict injuries and cause irritation in moulting." [italics mine]

Googling this yielded nothing for me, except references to clipping (thanks again, google). Has anyone heard of this? Does anyone still do this? What would be the easiest and most efficient way to "strip the vanes" from the quill? Why, aside from it taking a little more effort than the old snip-snip, is this not more commonly suggested today?

thoughts...?

 

[centrarchid]

Clipping vanes would be a lot more work as each feather so treated would need to be trimmed. The trimming could involve both sides of shaft but I bet doing only only would greatly reduce thrust generation. I have not seen damage caused by clipped feathers either on incoming feathers or something the wings come into contact with, including me when flogged.

The doing only one side falsehood has been around for quite a while.

 

[K.Riggs]

The doing only one side falsehood has been around for quite a while.[/QUOTE

Do you mean only clipping one wing? I clip one wing on my geese and ducks and they can't fly however I do the primary and secondary flight feathers because my geese are such good flyers they could still clear the low fences with just the primaries done. Mind you they could fly well enough to take out a power line which has happened to the person I got them from

 

[centrarchid]

A while back I did an experiment involving wing clippings. More than 50 hens treated. First, there are degrees of cannot fly. Second, birds scaling an obstacle using wings is not just about outright flight. The birds can employ "clambering" where the wings provide limited thrust and balance so legs can be used to run up an obstacle.

My game chickens which can fly as well, if not better, than any domestic chicken yet cannot not reach an elevated perch higher than 24" when both wings done properly. They can go half again as high up when only one wing is clipped.

 

[K.Riggs]

I don't do my chickens because of their roosting behavior I like them to be able to get up high easily and control their landings. And because I find they don't go far. Some of my chickens can fly very well but stay close. The water fowl I do because I have a river with Rapids at the back of my property. Far too dangerous if they fly down there. Next year I might do both sets of primarys and not the secondary. I hated doing the secondary on my ducks because they are beautiful iridescent green. In hindsight I probably didn't need to but after seeing what the geese could do with only primary done I just did the same which I regret now. Oh well they will grow back soon

 

[centrarchid]

I very seldom clips wings as well for same reasons.

 

[CapricornFarm]

People who keep exotic birds tend to clip feathers on one wing behind the first three primaries. This causes the birds to fly in a circular manner. They dislike it and often they quit trying to fly and walk instead.

 

[centrarchid]

I have had birds such as pigeons and chickens where clipping was done in an asymmetrical manner yet flight still possible. The birds were able to compensate, within limits, to have a straighter flight. It may retard interest in sustained flight but it did not suppress the type of flight that challenges containment of chickens. This is about containing chickens by suppressing their flight capacity used to top fences and pen walls.

 

[triplepurpose]

I don't like to clip wings at all normally unless a chicken who actually needs to remain confined gets out repeatedly from a sound enclosure--then that chicken gets a trim. If it gets out again--well, then I usually do secondaries as well and that usually does it with our standard 3 1/2 to 4 foot fencing. So, I basically observe the same protocols as Ussery in Small-scale Poultry Flock. I don't condone clipping for no reason, clipping free-roaming chickens, or doing it improperly. But if it helps keep fenced birds safer and easier to manage its a pretty innocuous practice.

The notion that clipping one set of primaries only is a fallacy is interesting... Hmm... I'll be investigating this more myself...

Yeah, obviously stripping the vanes takes longer than just clipping. But that's partly what intrigued me: if someone takes the trouble to practice and recommend something onstensibly more inconvenient/involved than other alternatives, there is usually some very good reason, at least in their mind. But since Hugh Piper has presumably been dead for about a century, i cant very well just ask him now, can i...

 

[Naser]

Once I had a rooster who likes to roost high on trees, I tied his outer wing feathers with cable ties enforced with super glue, after a week or two I removed them with wire cutter and his feathers were fine.