Broken Blood Feathers

Broken blood feathers can be serious, even fatal, so knowing what to do when you see the feather is broken is very important. Quick thinking can save your bird a lot of stress, pain, and maybe even its life.

Broken blood feathers can happen for a magnitude of reasons, so it would be hard to explain what causes it. But, this time with Alfie (moluccan cockatoo), he is in a molt and either the feather got caught wrong on the cage bars when he was traveling or he preened it incorrectly.

When blood feathers break, it’s incredibly painful for the bird. Alfie was doing his painful screams I’ve only heard once before when he broke another blood feather last year when flying inside. The feather was turned weird, and although through natural molts, primary flights may turn weird, the screaming told me it needed to go.

What you do is you restrain your bird. For Alfie, the best move was to put him on the floor and put a towel around him. Find the feather that is broken. Go all the way down to the base of the shaft, as close to the skin as you can get. Grab ahold of the feather tight and support the body so when you pull, you don’t accidentally pull their body with you resulting in possible breaks. Pull as strait out as you can and quick. You do not want the shaft to completely snap and stay inside the bird because the bleeding and pain won’t stop until the full shaft is removed.

It’s hard for us owners to see our birds in pain. But, the pluck of the feather is painful for maybe a second or less and then the bird is completely pain free once the feather is removed.

Do not put quick stop bleeding power on the feather. It causes immense pain because it’s only supposed to be used on a nail, not on skin and not on wounds. Trying to clot the blood instead of pulling it will only continue the pain for your bird and allows for the feather to continue to break, which may result in having to go to the vet to have it cut out of the birds wing if the shaft is still in there.

It’s hard to do as an owner the first time, not going to lie at all. Fortunately, I’ve had to pull my fair share of blood feathers, so this wasn’t as scary for me this time. It’s not fun but it needs to be done