Plucking primaries as treatment for angel wing?

Finnie

Crowing
Premium Feather Member
9 Years
Oct 27, 2014
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Just north of Indianapolis
So I’ve been reading up on angel wing, and it appears that wrapping is the only method of reversing it if it’s caught early enough. What I’ve also read is that the cause of the twisting is due to the feathers growing too fast before the duckling’s wing bones are strong enough to hold the feathers up. That got me to wondering, if the offending “too heavy” feathers were plucked, would the wing structure then be able to grow properly without the weight of them? Then theoretically the wing bones would be stronger by the time new pin feathers grew to that stage again.

The reason I ask, is because so many of the accounts mention how futile their attempts at wrapping were. The people who were able to successfully keep the wrap on their ducklings cured the angel wing, but the people whose ducklings continually escaped from their wraps were unable to reverse the angel wing.

In my situation, I have 10 Khaki Campbell ducklings, 6 weeks old, being raised by 3 geese. They free range all day long and their diet consists of a lot of foraging and also 15% chick feed. One of them looks to be starting to get angel wing and I’d like to try to head that off. But I really don’t like the idea of twice-daily rodeos to wrap and unwrap, knowing that I’m not very good at wrapping to begin with, and mine will likely be the wrap that falls off. Plucking the offending feathers would be a “one and done” thing, if that could be a likely option.

I couldn’t find anything about this on the Internet, so I thought I would ask the duck experts here what they think the chances of this working are.
 
Plucking the feathers will do nothing. Wrapping is futile in my experiences. Ducks are good escape artist.

I currently have 2 muscovy drake ducklings with angel wing. They don't even have any wing feathers growing yet.

I have one adult muscovy hen with angel wing. She came from some eggs I purchased. I read that Angel wing can be genetic. I've never seen angel wing here before these, so I tend to believe it is genetic.
 
. I read that Angel wing can be genetic. I've never seen angel wing here before these, so I tend to believe it is genetic.
I tend to agree with you. All 10 of these ducklings are on the same diet. If it was diet related, I’d think more of them would have it. For some diet related problems, I don’t think it’s because of a faulty diet, but rather because of the individual bird being genetically unable to assimilate the diet properly. I wonder if something similar is going on with the angel wing condition.
 
IMO, high levels of protein are one of the lesser causes of angel wing, more common, genetics, excessive heat, and lack of adequate exercise.
Thank you for that. They are being raised by geese, so they have been hiking all over as fast as their little legs can carry them their whole lives. But the past week or so has been quite hot here, so maybe that is a factor. They probably have been spending most of their time resting in the shade. Still, whatever the conditions, only the one is affected so far. Leads me to think it’s genetic.
 
Bandaging Is a skill most people don't practice. Often The health of your animals relys on your ability to fashion and manioulate things with your hands, some people are better at it then others. Examples : bandages, splints, wheel chairs, housing, tube feeding, pilling.
 

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