Budgie with Broken Blood feather!

[DonnaBudgie]

This afternoon I went to check on the three budgies that free fly on my enclosed porch and saw blood dribbled down the side of a cage onto the cabinet it sets on! All I could think was YIKES! I checked the three budgies, and Big Fluffy, a large male English Budgie, had broken a blood feather, splattering blood all over the cabinet and his wings! He was not actively bleeding anymore and didn't look too bothered by it but the feather needed to be pulled and I'm not very comfortable doing that so I brought him to the avian vet to do it and clean him up. Now, poor Fluffy can't fly much for a while. He's not a strong flier to begin with because he's so big and heavy and without this flight feather he's going to be doing more walking. I don't want to cage him for a month while it grows back because he isn't used to being caged and will hate it. The vet pulled the feather and cleaned him up. He also did a quick exam and said he was in good health. At least it happened on a weekday when the avian vet was in and could see him so we dodged that bullet!

 

[nkrbkr]

Oh goodness, poor guy. I’m glad the bleeding had stopped, and that you were able to take him to the vet right away. Have you had this happen before with any of your birds? I’ve always heard about it, but have wondered how common it is.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

I've never had it happen but they say it's pretty common. There's talk on PF about knowing how to pull a bleeding blood feather in an emergency and I suppose I could do it with tweezers and I have stypik powder to stop bleeding but it's not something I want to do, but of all my budgies Fluffy would probably be the easiest to do because hes so big and gentle. Fluffy's feather broke hours it seems before I noticed it because all the blood had dried and he had stopped bleeding but I'm sort of glad I didn't notice it earlier because my husband wasn't home and he had the truck so I would have felt I had to do it myself. There was quite a bit of blood considering how small even a very large budgie like Fluffy is. I'm just so glad he's okay. He's such a special budgie, but I say that about all of them.