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Chickens are generally pretty low maintenance animals when it comes to routine care and grooming. During the day, you will see them dust bathing to use the particles of dirt to help remove old skin cells, parasites, and excess oil from themselves. They will also spend a lot of time preening themselves, which involves distributing oil from the preen gland around their feathers to help keep them moisturised and waterproofed. During this process, they will also rearrange the feathers so they are all facing in the correct directions and not getting tangled up.
In this section, we will cover bathing, nail trimming, and wing clipping to help you determine whether you need to do these procedures for your birds and how to perform them safely if you do.
Routine bathing is not recommended for chickens because this removes essential oils from their feathers which makes them less waterproof and causes them to dry out. The only times you should bathe your chickens is if they become coated in mud, oily or sticky substances, or droppings that would be difficult for chickens to clean off themselves.
Important things to remember if you do need to bathe them are:
Most of the time, chickens will wear down their nails naturally from walking around their run and scratching on the ground. However, sometimes the nails can become overgrown and start to curl around towards their toes. This makes it more difficult for chickens to balance and the nails can become embedded in the skin which is painful for them.
Check out this video from Meyer’s Hatchery for a step-by-step guide on how to safely trim nails:
You will sometimes hear people talking about clipping their chicken’s wings to stop them from flying away. This is generally not needed and not recommended because most adult chickens do not fly very well and clipping their wing feathers can cause them harm if it’s not done correctly. Pullets and young hens are more likely to try flying because they haven’t reached their full weight so it’s much easier for them to get airborne.
Occasionally you will get some hens that will attempt to go on some flying adventures over the fenceline. The first thing to do is look at your set-up and see if there are simple ways to prevent your chickens from escaping such as raising the height of the fences or covering the run in netting or mesh. As well as keeping your chickens from getting out, this will also help stop predators from getting in. You can also try training hens not fly away by putting them back in the run every time they escape and they quickly learn that their efforts get them nowhere..
If you have tried the behavioural modification techniques and those still aren’t working, check out this video from Sez the Vet for a step-by-step guide on how to safely trim wing feathers: