DNA testing

[Noah]

Just wondering if anyone has any tips for taking the necessary feathers for a DNA test? My two birds are still very skittish around hands and under no circumstances will they allow me to hold them. So I'm going to have to grab them against their will, which I am not looking forward to at all!

Is there a 'best practice' way to do it? Any tips on avoiding a bite? Do the feathers come out easily?

 

[SailBoat]

Just wondering if anyone has any tips for taking the necessary feathers for a DNA test? My two birds are still very skittish around hands and under no circumstances will they allow me to hold them. So I'm going to have to grab them against their will, which I am not looking forward to at all!

Is there a 'best practice' way to do it? Any tips on avoiding a bite? Do the feathers come out easily?

If you are uncomfortable with removing a feather from your Parrot, you can visit your Avian Vet or the individuals that sold you your Parrot and have them preform the action.

All though highly Stressful, you can towel them and commonly just that process of toweling results is the loss of one or more body feathers. If not, once toweled, remove the body feather(s) at that time.

I hope that this helps!

 

[lomeraniel]

Take 4-6 feathers from around the cloaca with a pair of sanitized tweezers. It just takes some seconds.

Sent from my HUAWEI VNS-L31 using Tapatalk

 

[Mariar]

Or.....you can get a sample of blood by clipping a nail. like i did for sissy. It was easy. It was painless. And it wasnt stressful.

 

[YUMgrinder]

Or.....you can get a sample of blood by clipping a nail. like i did for sissy. It was easy. It was painless. And it wasnt stressful.

I wouldn't say it's painless, as you are cutting their nail till it bleeds. If you did that to yourself, it would hurt. I'm not saying I don't condone it, I just hate the mess it makes sometimes. You should have seen jojo when I DNA tested him, he wouldn't stop scratching his head really fast and he had blood ALL over his head. he looked like a bird zombie.

In my experience, only mine, I did 3 birds at the same time and all 3 I had problems getting the bleeding to stop. I was super careful and clipped a little at a time till I got some blood. In the future I will do feather testing.

Back to the OPs question, I would towel him, gently, to do it. Make sure you use sterilized tweezers so you don't contaminate anything. You can do this by dropping some metal tweezers in boiling water or take a lighter and put a flame to it for a small amount of time. Let it cool first before using it.

 

[Noah]

Thanks a lot for the advice, everyone. This forum is a real help!