Question: Wing Feather Growth Lacking?

About Three Months Ago I Picked Up A Little Girl Already Around 6 Months Of Age. Her Previous Owners Cut Her Wings For I Don't Know How Long, But It's Beginning To Worry Me. My Budgies Are Free To Fly In My Room And She Still Can't Even Get Off The Ground By Flying? I Thought This Was Normal At First As She Had Been Hospitalized In Her Quarantine Cage And Perhaps Was Grumpy And Didn't Want To Fly. It's Been A Month With Her Being Free Flighted And She Gets Very Frustrated Following The Others Via Ground And I Just Wondered If Something Was Wrong? Otherwise She Eats, Sings, Poops, Plays And Even Talks, I'm Unfamiliar With The Growth Rate Of Their Wing Feathers So I Thought I Would Just Ask. Thanks!

It takes months for all the feathers togrow back. While it does vary from bird to bird, it does take about 6-8 months at least. This is going off of my experience.

The feathers will grow in once the cut ones fall out. Nothing is wrong.

If you still believe something could be wrong try taking it to a vet.

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The wing feathers usually come in with the first molt which happens between 6 and 10 months. You do have another option.
Assumedly you have an AV. Ask him/her to pluck the flight feathers... don't try it yourself unless trained... and they'll grow back in about a month.
One of my babies can't fly. It's not a total loss as long as she is active and not abused by the others. It's important not to baby her no matter what. That WILL entice the other birds to hurt her!

Flying isn't a skill birds are born with, they have to learn how to fly well and it takes practice.
The majority of sources I've read above wing cutting heavily advise against wing cutting before the bird is able to learn how to fly properly so if they've been cut before that time it might be that they still have yet to learn.
Like others have said, feathers grow back. Give it some time and they might fly.

Don't do the featherpulling just to "hurry things up" plze.
It is verry painfull for the birds- because of the way they are attached.
The smaller feathers are "just in the skin" like your hairs, but the large flight ones...it more like you getting your fingernails pulled out.
Only do so in case of emergency (like a broken bloodfeather- and even only then if no other options are available).


Just give your bird time to molt naturally.
If it is fully flighted, go to the amazon-section and read page 4 and up in the sticky there, it's about enticing bird to fly in a safe way.
She will need to build op stamina and muscles first (after she gets her feathers back).

Alright Thank You All So Much! I Can't Wait For Her To Molt So She Can Finally Follow Her Pesky Flock Mates Around The Room Without Much Of A Hassle!

ChristaNL said:

Don't do the featherpulling just to "hurry things up" plze.
It is verry painfull for the birds- because of the way they are attached.
The smaller feathers are "just in the skin" like your hairs, but the large flight ones...it more like you getting your fingernails pulled out.
Only do so in case of emergency (like a broken bloodfeather- and even only then if no other options are available).


Just give your bird time to molt naturally.
If it is fully flighted, go to the amazon-section and read page 4 and up in the sticky there, it's about enticing bird to fly in a safe way.
She will need to build op stamina and muscles first (after she gets her feathers back).

Click to expand...

That's one reason only an AV should pull feathers! Even smaller coverts.

A bird that has never fledged needs special flight training which takes a very long time. If not done properly and slowly, you can actually injure the bird. Teaching a bird to fly can be done in uninjured and flight- capable birds. My WCP is not even flight-capable, so won't even be considered.

ChristaNL said:

Don't do the featherpulling just to "hurry things up" plze.
It is verry painfull for the birds- because of the way they are attached.
The smaller feathers are "just in the skin" like your hairs, but the large flight ones...it more like you getting your fingernails pulled out.
Only do so in case of emergency (like a broken bloodfeather- and even only then if no other options are available).


Just give your bird time to molt naturally.
If it is fully flighted, go to the amazon-section and read page 4 and up in the sticky there, it's about enticing bird to fly in a safe way.
She will need to build op stamina and muscles first (after she gets her feathers back).

Click to expand...

I agree with this completely. Even when a vet pulls the feathers, it hurts them unless they are sedated, which is too risky IMO for something that will happen on it's own.

Oh no, no feather-pulling!

The amount of time it takes a Budgie's wings to grow back depends totally on how much was clipped, and unfortunately many uneducated breeders, pet shops (especially) will clip way too many, some actually take ALL of their flight feathers, not knowing any better.

For frame of reference, when I clip a Budgie's wings, I only clip the outermost primary flight feathers on each wing, and I only clip 4-5 at most. And when I only clip their outermost 4-5 primary flight feathers, it usually takes about 1 and 1/2 to 2 months for them to grow back in to the point where they can fly again. So if the person or shop that had your little Budgie clipped any more than just the first few primary flight feathers, which I'm sure they did unfortunately, then it could potentially take 6 months or longer for them to grow back in. 3 months is no time at all if they happened to clip all of her primaries, and if the got into her secondaries then forget about it, it's going to take a great deal of time.

Do not EVER pull any feathers on any bird unless you know exactly what you're doing, and you know exactly what to look for before doing it. Without meaning to you could accidentally pull perfectly good feathers, feathers that are growing in just fine, and most importantly, you might end up pulling a blood feather (and it may be a large one if it's in the primary flight feathers) and this can easily lead to a Budgie bleeding to death in a matter of a couple of minutes, as they have little blood to begin with.

****Something else that you do want to watch for: I don't know where you got your Budgie, whether it be from a breeder or a pet shop, but at her age she is getting ready for her first really huge molt, and this may delay her flight feathers growing back in, so you have to account for the molt too...However, if after about 6 months or at the time when you can actually visibly see that all of her flight-feathers are grown back in, and she still isn't able to fly, and you see her king of attempting to fly but with no success, then at that point you need to consider the possibility that her "breeder", and I use that term loosely with Budgies that are purchased at pet shops who don't breed their own babies in-house (Petco, PetSmart, PetLand, any other large chain, and any small, private pet shop that orders their birds from elsewhere), may have clipped her wings BEFORE she fledged. A lot of the mass-breeders that most of the pet shops today order their young Budgies from do this all the time, it's actually their normal practice, as they want to ship those babies as soon as possible, and even more so, these places have little to absolutely NO interaction with their baby Budgies until the day that they catch them and put them in the shipping boxes to go to the pet shop. So as a result of their mass-breeding methods, they have no idea how old any of their babies actually are, they have no idea who their parents are, etc., and as a result they just eyeball the baby Budgies for age, make sure that they have come out of the nest boxes, and when they decide they are old enough to ship to the pet shop, they just clip them and they're boxed and shipped...So they often have no idea whether the babies have fully-fledged when they clip them...And even some private breeders, sadly, clip their baby Budgies before they fully-fledge, either due to a lack of education and knowledge about what they are doing, or because they don't care and they want the babies sold and gone asap. When a baby bird is clipped before they fledge, they basically don't have any idea how to fly, among other possible issues...

So if by chance, and I doubt this will happen but just an FYI, if by chance your baby grows all of her flight feathers back in and is still not able to fly or is having visible issues flying, then it's probable that they were clipped too soon, before they fully-fledged, and you're going to have to actually work with her and "show" her how to fly. We can help you with that bridge when and if you cross it. Hopefully you won't have to deal with that problem, I think it's more likely that whomever clipped her just went a little crazy and took more than just the necessary few primaries, which can take a long, long time to grow back in.