Cockatiel molting pattern?

reeb

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Oct 23, 2017
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Cape Town, South Africa
Parrots
Berry (♀ Cockatiel) hatched June 2017
Opal (♂ Budgie) hatched 13 August 2017
Pearl (♀ Budgie) hatched 15 August 2017
+ an aviary of 16 other budgies! all hatched 2014-2017
Hi everyone, this might be a long-ish post because I want to get as much detail in as possible!

Berry’s wings were clipped as a baby (the breeder did it without asking me), leaving only four of her longest flight feathers. So far, since I brought her home in October 2017, she has molted a couple of times and has grown back around 50% of her wing feathers, except for the middle section on both wings. Here is a slightly blurry image of her wings from a few weeks ago (she was really excited to see me and flapping like crazy so I tried to capture the moment haha), and there hasn’t been a change since then, she has just molted the longest flight feathers again since then.

b0b7d3e25fafd1f03ec0300a5b5c92c5.jpg


So she has actually molted her longest flight feathers twice now, and her inside feathers (closest to her body) at least once, but has not molted these middlemost feathers at all yet.

I know staggered molting is normal, but should I be concerned since she’s molting again and hasn’t lost any of these cut feathers yet? What are your experiences with cockatiel molting patterns, or even your other parrots? I’ve never had a bird with clipped wings, so I’ve never really taken note of budgie molting patterns, for instance.

She is flying really, really well despite not having these feathers. She does dips, turns, and gets a lot of height - she’s just a little clumsy on landing sometimes!

Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!
 
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LordTriggs

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May 11, 2017
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Rio (Yellow sided conure) sadly no longer with us
from what I have seen clipping before the first molt can result in the cut feathers taking longer to molt, I believe it's due to them not getting damaged or something? It could well be that
 

MonicaMc

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Sep 12, 2012
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Mitred Conure - Charlie 1994;
Cockatiel - Casey 2001;
Wild Caught ARN - Sylphie 2013
What I've noticed is that if a bird loses feather #9 on the left wing, then they'll lose #10 or #8 on the other wing.

Saying that, it can take 1-2 years for a bird to molt out all of their old feathers and replace with new feathers, so since it's only been 6 months, you've still got a while yet to go before you'll know whether or not it'll be an issue for those feathers to grow back in.


Worse case scenario, you can look into imping or getting those clipped feathers pulled.
 

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