Chicken catcher

I had a need for a chicken catcher the other day. No, not a dog, though Spotz is a fine chicken catcher/killer (he has to live in a pen because of that bad habit). No, I mean a stick.

Around here I've never seen a chicken catcher for sale in the feed/farm stores. I don't know why, because we have plenty of chickens on this island. But then, I've never asked the sales people, so perhaps they store them in a box someplace out of sight. Regardless, I ended up having to fashion one myself. 

I'm rounding up my renegade loose chickens. It's time for the girls to be penned again. When I let the hens out to forage, there's always a couple that don't return to the pen at night, though they usually go back in the next day it two.  Eventually they make a habit out of it and never go back. So every December, I round up the rebels and throw them back in the pen. For the months of January and February, the hens don't run loose. That's so they habituate on laying their eggs in the nest boxes. After everybody is laying again and is use to the rules, they are once again allowed out to forage for bugs, lizards, mice, worms, etc. 

So I've been enticing the wayward girls into a catch box. The box needed to be bigger than what is comfortable for me to just reach in a grab them. Thus the need for the chicken catcher. I can use it to snag them by the leg.

My quick fashioned catcher. It's only 2 foot long, but just the size I need. 

A chicken catcher is simply a piece of sturdy wire that has been bent into a shape that can snag a foot.  The handle is normally 3 to 4 foot long, but my homemade one is shorter because the birds are already caught in a trap box. Snagging a chicken takes a bit of patience, practice, and skill. The hens quickly learn that they need to avoid the wire, but they are not slick enough to totally understand how to do that effectively. So after a dozen tries, I've usually successfully snagged the chicken.

This shape works fine for easy to catch birds.
 It needs a little modification for the more difficult chickens. 

Snagged a hen!