Chicken coops plans

Feral chickens are pretty darned wily. They wouldn’t survive otherwise. Also, they are going to be fast little buggers and fly like eagles.

I’d construct a temporary pen (one they can’t fly out of, because they are going to be able to fly amazing heights and distances) and get them used to you feeding them in it over a week or more. Go out, call “Chick-chick-chick” and let them see you dropping the food in the pen. Go out and leave the door to the pen open so they can go inside and eat. Chickens are VERY food motivated and are basically unable to resist food.

Once they catch on that FOOD is being handed out in the pen, and get a little more used to you, you can drop food in the pen that has to be eaten in place–scratch or something too heavy to carry away, suck as raw corn on the cob. Once the chickens go in, shut the door to the pen. They you go, trapped chickens. You can repeat this process until you’ve gotten them all or have reduced their numbers to a manageable amount.

Of course, this means that either you or some willing high school kids you’ve hired are going to have to go in there and start grabbing chickens (wait until it’s dark and the chickens can’t see and it’ll be WAY easier). Pack them into pet carriers or cardboard boxes and cart them to the local animal shelter or feed store as freebies. Some people use a ‘catching pole’–a long pole with a noose at one end, they look like this:

http://www.animal-traps.com/catch-poles.htm

You can easily make one yourself. Snare the chickens by their legs only, if you go for their necks you can easily kill them. The chicks should want to stay with mama, so if you catch mama and cage her, the chicks will soon appear, peeping, and you can grab them and box them up. Keep each mamas’ chicks with that hen, if you mix them up the strange chicks could be killed by the mother hen.

Or, place an ad on Craigslist, the local ad paper, the feed store, whatever–’Free chickens, you catch ‘em, you keep ‘em!’

Good luck, like I said–wild chickens are clever little stinkers. I’ll be willing to bet they are all banties, right?

Velvet ~:>

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