Cockatiel With Broken Blood Feather. What To Do?

[TehLizardKing]

Entered the aviary this morning, and was greeted warmly by my two lutino cockatiels, Kawaii and Utsukushi. Kawaii seemed reluctant to fly up onto my shoulder for some reason, so I bent down to pick her up. To my horror I noticed there was a big streak of dried blood down her wing. After googling profusely, I found that it was a broken blood feather, most likely from night frights. The bleeding has stopped, but what do I do? Apparently i should pull the feather, but what tool do I use, and how do I minimise the pain for my poor little girlie?

Thanks y'all!

 

[spikennipper]

I would just get some tweezers and hold the base of the shaft and pull firmly up wards she may squark but it will get rid of it and is unllikely to hurt much even though she may act otherwise, leaving it in will just cause more blood loss and poss infection.
Good luck

 

[TehLizardKing]

Thank you so much. I'm off to do it ASAP, and hopefully nothing else will go wrong . One more thing, how do I isolate the shaft? It's just a clump of bloody feathers at the moment. Thanks again SpikenNipper .

 

[spikennipper]

Hi, sorry for the late reply you have probably done it by now but I would just clean off as much blood as possible with a damp cotton bud or similar, the blood feather should be quite obvious as the shaft will be filled with blood and no feather visible as it would have broken off so hopefully you can isolate it this way, there may even be more than one, I would pull them all, let me know how you get on it may be worth getting a helper to hold the bird for you as I don't think she is going to be too pleased!

 

[appps]

Our white cockatiel does this quite often. We leave a night light now days lol

I've only had two that I worried about treating. Most of the time thiugh If they aren't still bleeding and not causing obvious pain I just leave it and they have been fine.

The two times I did worry she was in obvious pain each time she moved the wing. I'm a wimp so both times I took her to the vet and they pulled the feather.

 

[TehLizardKing]

Thanks so much guys, after half an hour of wrestling with an angry 'tiel, (my dad was at work and my mum and sisters were too squeemish to help me

) I managed to get the feather out. I would have left it, but she kept bashing it again and again... I think she's safer with it gone to be honest. Am now using a night light and havn't had any night frights since

, although the other birds look a bit miffed about it, with the exception of the canary, who just uses it as an excuse to have a rap battle with the fairy wren late at night

.