what to do about a broken wing feather?

My CAG doesn't appear to be in pain and she's acting normally but one of her four long feathers broke off. I'm wondering if the other part will simply fall out when a new feather grows in or if I should take her to the vet to have the other part removed. There was no blood or anything. The link at the bottom is what the fallen part looks like.


http://imgur.com/VmVEphb

As long as a feather no longer has blood in the shaft, it is finished growing and unless the feather/shaft is wiggled around in the follicle, a bird should not have any pain from the feather/shaft.....looking at your pic, it looks like Shadow may have cut that feather off herself (think snagged fingernails...they bother you until you take care of them)...it could have gotten caught in her cage bars, cracked it & because it didn't fee right, she chewed it off.....

Yes, it would be a good idea to have the remaining shaft stub removed because most birds will worry with them and may remove it themselves, but you should know how to do it yourself, it's easy and doesn't bother the bird.....it could be that you might need to remove a broken blood feather...removing those do not bother a bird either and though a healthy bird's blood will normally coagulate before it becomes critical to the bird's life, it is upsetting and needs to be done immediately.....your vet can show you how to properly do it.....

Are there any guides on how to do it? I'm pretty comfortable around birds and all that but this is something I've never encountered. It might be better to get her to a vet, I don't want to risk hurting her but at the same time it would be a good skill to have in the future.

Darci said:

Are there any guides on how to do it? I'm pretty comfortable around birds and all that but this is something I've never encountered. It might be better to get her to a vet, I don't want to risk hurting her but at the same time it would be a good skill to have in the future.

Click to expand...

I've never seen a guide, though there could be one or two floating around the internet...possibly YouTube...

I always suggest that a pair of needle nosed pliers be used to grasp the feather shaft, as close to the skin/follicle as possible and give a sharp yank and, strangely enough, the feather/shaft will pop out & if you do it right, the bird hardly notices and may not notice at all.....a bird's feather's are designed for quick release...and...if a predator were to grab all or some of a bird's tail feathers, the predator is often left with a mouth of feathers while the bird has safely...flown the coup.....

When I've extracted feathers for DNA testing, I'd tightly grab 5 or 6 and give a sharp jerk, pulling all at the same time, but with broken flight feathers it's wise to use something that will not slip off the shaft.....many people don't or can't hold larger feathers with bare fingers.....

Good luck.....

Hemostatic forceps works better then needle nosed pliers. As it's got the locking mechanism that will lock in place while you pull. This works better for larger parrots as the needle nose pliers tend to rip the feather shaft in pieces.

I managed to get her into a towel and I looked at it. She struggles a lot though, she packs a big punch for such a little package. It for sure won't bleed when I go to pull it?

I have heard of people using a sock with the toes cut out around the birds body in case of wing damage, should I try and rig something like this up to keep her from breaking another one? she broke one in the (largely one-sided) struggle. She isn't hurt but I don't want to keep breaking her feathers.

As long as you pull the shaft straight out, it won't bleed & we tend to be more anxious about something like this than our birds do...like them being more concerned about being toweled than the feather pull.....since you're concerned about the actual deed, maybe you do want your vet to show you the ease in doing it.....

Have fun.....