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For most chickens, the first 5 should be plenty to keep them from being able to gain altitude. However, on young pullets or light breeds such as leghorns you may need to cut more, probably 6-7, because they don't weigh as much and therefore don't need quite as much thrust to get airborne.
Buffy's beak is a deformity, although it can happen with injury as a young chick too. When she came to me as a day old chick there was absolutely no evidence, but when she was about 5 days old I noticed that her beak was ever so slightly crooked (like maybe 1-2mm off) and it got worse as she got older. If you look, you can see that it's not just her beak, her whole face is kind of crooked! From what I have read, it seems that most cross beaked chickens do not show any signs of it until they are closer to 6-8 weeks old. I have seen some pictures of just hatched chicks with crossed beaks, but from what I understand they almost never survive. What exactly causes cross-beaks is still kind of up in the air and there seems to be several causes. I'm sure there must be a genetic component, but there are theories that improper temperature during incubation and possibly even nutrition can also cause it. Unfortunately, Buffy can't eat normally and it's so sad to watch her pecking around trying to pick things up because she just can't. But she eats well as long as I keep a deep "bowl" of layer crumbles (actually, I use a couple milk jug feeders) available and she can eat treats like oatmeal or soup if I put it in a deep bowl for her.
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As long as the blood supply has receded and the feather shaft is clear there is no such thing as "too far" when clipping the feathers using the individual feather method. I cut as far down the shaft as I can get (sometimes it's not as close to the skin as I would like if they are struggling) and always go below where the barbs start coming out of the shaft. The only time you ever have to worry about going too far is if the feather is still growing in and the shaft still has a blood supply. If you do accidentally cut a blood feather, the best thing to do to stop the bleeding is to pluck the feather (yes, it hurts but so does cutting into the bloodfeather and plucking will stop the bleeding much faster than trying to apply pressure to the feather shaft).
