Wing Trimming: What Feathers To Trim on Your Parrot
It’s controversial, but our parrot’s feathers get trimmed when/if they are flying into windows, being tamed or they are flying (sometimes the babies I’m hand-feeding do this) onto the cage of bigger birds that could bite them!
3 Layes of Feathers
It is VERY Important to know that you DO NOT trim the upper layers of a parrot’s feathers. The bottom ‘fan’ of feathers has ‘the most’ feathers – in the photo you can see that Luna Love’s feathers have a hole – a space where her feathers hadn’t grown out all the way. This is the row you trim, but it’s not common for people to trim more than 4 to 5 feathers from the furthest point (where you see the right-hand thumb). The feathers can be trimmed lightly, meaning you just trim a quarter inch to half an inch -depending on the size of the bird’s feathers, of course – so that the bird can GLIDE as opposed to flying up.
Trimming can be very perilous – trimming the upper feather rows or trimming a blood feather that has blood for growing the feather in it, can cause a bird to bleed to death. Be sure that you understand what part of the wing’s ‘fan’ to trim.
To further clarify, do you see the jagged feathers under the right-hand thumb? They ‘look cut’ because they are. Again, you generally don’t have to trim so much, this was a pic of Luna Love (cockatiel) half a year after I got her (bird shop trimms A LOT of feathers), and hers’ were growing out.
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