Blood feather

[crimson]

How do you stop a blood feather from bleeding? I've never encountered that with my birds, so I was wondering what to do if that happens.

 

[Pedro]

Best thing is to pull the offending feather out. Check this link out.

Cockatiels, Blood Feathers, Broken Blood Feathers,How to Pull a Broken Blood Feather from a Bird, What is a Blood Feather

 

[henpecked]

Thanks that seems to be a good article .

 

[crimson]

thanks Pedro, very useful info

 

[MonicaMc]

You can try stopping the bleeding with corn starch, flour, or cayenne pepper. Sometimes, it helps to make a paste of the corn starch or cayenne pepper before applying it.

Otherwise, as stated, pulling the feather. Pulling a feather can hurt the bird quite a bit, and if you don't pull near the base of the feather, you might break the feather again and it could be even harder to remove it. Once pulled, the bleeding *should* stop.

 

[crimson]

since I've never done that before, it sounds like you would need practice to do it right....also sound kind of scary if you dont know how to do it correctly.

 

[echoskybound]

I've had MANY blood feathers break from when my conure was trying to learn to fly while feathers where still growing in. Honestly, I started out by pulling the feathers, but he broke so many tail feathers that I became afraid of damaging the folicle by pulling so many feathers out, so I just started protecting the feather. I would stop the bleeding with styptic powder, flour, or corn starch. I would then take a small piece of soft medical tape and wrap it loosely around the end of the feather after it stopped bleeding (but make sure there's to stick ends that can get caught on other feathers.) The feather will still grow in, it will just look funny, or the end of it will be missing. I'm not sure how well that would work for a wing feather, though, since that's so easy for them to chew. It's probably not the best strategy, but as I said, I was worried about pulling too many feathers. It was obviously painful, stressful, and I worried that it would cause long term damage.

 

[Boysmom]

Pulling blood feathers sounds much scarier than it really is. I was fostering a pair of sun conures who seemed to break blood feathers daily. They were a skittish jumpy pair of young suns and if you even looked at them they would flail around their cage and break feathers. I had my avian vet teach me to pull the feathers and from there out it was easy. The corn starch or flour works really well also, but you will have to keep constant watch that the bleeding doesnt start up again, and keep them in a small hospital cage to restrict activity until it is healed or pulled.