How to clip wings?

[Kel60]

Escape attempt!

They've been bouncing around but I managed to startle one today and away she went! Almost 10 feet straight up luckily the yard is fenced and she seemed pretty perturbed by being somewhere new and was easy to catch.

How do you clip their feathers?
Like can you just use scissors?
And how much feather do you take off?

 

[FloorCandy]

If you fold out the wing the feathers furthest from the body are longer than the rest, these are primaries. You want to cut the primaries on only 1 wing. You will see they get shorter and shorter as they get closer to the body, but the maybe 6 longest are a different texture, then short softer feathers start. Cut the long ones down to the height of the the next shorter layer, it’s about 1/2 to 1/3 the length of the feather.

Importantly, check for blood feathers first. If you look on the underside of the wing, you can see the blood in the shaft of many immature feathers. You want to only cut mature feathers that no longer have blood in the shaft. If you do cut a blood feather and it starts to bleed, you need to pull the feather out at the source.