Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Hi Folks,

I have a new crop of breeders that have the most irritating habit. they can remove their legbands!!!! these are the numbered wrap around legbands. It started with one hen. Then she taught all the others in her pen, that then passed it to the others in the pen next to them, and now my legbands are useless. I find them neatly piled behind the door to the pen or in the nesting boxes. Its not that they are slipping out of them because they're too big, they're actually grabbing the ends and pulling them open and pulling on them until they come off.

So what i need is advice. I have a bunch of spiral unnumbered legbands that i could use (and to my knowledge they haven't figured those out yet), but was hoping to use numbered so i could keep track more easily using a spreadsheet system instead of the elaborate multiple band system i have been using.

I see there are "clip" bands-they're hinged and have a clip to hold them together. Are these any good? Easy/hard for a bird to pull off?
I want to stay away from the metal clip bands that are crimped because my coop is unheated and some of the birds dabble in their water dishes, great recipe for frostbite or bands freezing to their legs in the winter.

I also know about wing bands, and those will be my go to if i cannot find a leg band that stays on.

so what do people use? And how does it work for you?

I used wingbands on the turkeys. Didn't put them on until a few weeks old. Yes they can get them off and a couple of the Jennies managed to. I'll use these again this year.

Can you toe punch an adult chicken?

Do you need/want a numbered solution? If so, what kind of numbers are you talking about? If it's only a small number, maybe you could somehow number the spiral leg bands you already have: either use an awl to poke a different number of dots along each band, or paint on nail polish dots. I don't know if either would work, but thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

Edited To Add: ... or if you have a wood burning tool, you could melt little marks along the band. Or heat up the tip of your awl before poking it into the band.

My bigger roosters would probably kill me if i tried toe punching them! Lol

I noticed my original tom has removed his spiral legband. GRRRRRRRRRR! but I bet it was from fighting. Im going forward with toe punching chicks though and aluminium riveted bands. its nice to have a back up incase the bands do fall off. with all the reds I produced last year I marked them with zip ties. everytime I redid them the numbers wernt adding up, I had the same number of birds but most of them didnt have their bands on! grrrrrr! sure made picking potential breeders a PITA. I do not want to repeat that!

ya probably could Robbie but a regular toe punch wont work. maybe use a paper punch? sounds kinda painful on an adult chicken but I bet they would be fine.

If there the flat wide snap bands just put a dab of crazy glue on slip joint once you have on in groove . Works on my pigeons . You can cut off if needed with small trimming scissors . Luck

now that's a great idea Ross!!! that should work with the spiral bands to!

I tried with the spiral bands and the glue got really brittle and they still managed to get them off. So ross, those are the bands i saw with the snap grooves....i may try those with the glue. The glue should stay in the groove....hm....

I use the different colours & V notch the band with toe nail cutters if needed . Luck