My liitle lutino has blood on her wing and on closer inspection it's a blood feather bleeding. She's not bleeding now but how do I deal with it?

How to pull a broken blood feather

You will need forceps (tweezers) to pull out the remains of broken blood feathers. Support the wing or limb carefully, locate the broken and bleeding feather. Using the forceps, get a good grip around the base of that feather and pull it out in the direction of growth. Use flour for any bleeding. Once the feather is pulled, generally the bleeding stops and further damage is avoided. If you do not feel comfortable doing this please call your Avian Vet ASAP. A small amount of blood loss in budgies can be fatal.

 

written by Kaz in the FAQ's

 

if it is not bleeding I would leave it but keep an eye on it in case it restarts you may have to pull it

Edited April 18, 200817 yr by Elly

Ouch! Bella has done this MANY times! I didn't trust my shaking hands with tweezers so i just did it with my hands, after the bleeding had stopped. finally managed to find the little bugger!

Well it's currently not bleeding (she must have done it overnight) so I will leave it for the moment. I used to work as a part time vet nurse so I should be right to deal with it if needs be now that I know the procedure

White pepper is best for stopping bleeding - Corn flour is better than regular flour too

Kaz mentioned in another post the other day that she had lost a bird through blood feather bleeding. I have never seen that happen, I have always just looked on it as a pretty normal occurrence & never done anything, the same with pin feathers on the face, I have seen many on here panic about that, but it happens regularly & I have never done anything & within two days normally it has cleared up. Removal of the offending feather especially in the wing could be a good idea, as then it should stop bleeding & then renew the feather, which would be an advantage to the bird in the long run. Some of the more show type buff birds seem to have more problems than others.

 

As the geneticists say each mutation is basically a fault in the normal gene & even though breeders see buff as a plus in their aim to breed a bird closest to the model of “perfection” they require, I still think that buff is a deterioration in feather quality from the normal wild type bird which has beautiful sleek tight feathers.

Edited April 18, 200817 yr by Norm

Well she isn't bleeding now so I'll do my feeds and get some cornflour out incase she bleeds again and I'll do it in a little while. She doesn't seem too concerned about it at the moment.

I have had a few birds get blood feathers. i stop the bleeding then inspect the feathers to see why there was blood. half the time i can not find a broken or damaged feather, so i just leave them alone and they are fine If it keeps bleeding on and off (which does happen ) then finding the source of the bleed and removing the feather is needed.

It is pretty obvious which feather it is, it's bright red at the base, I'll take it out I think

ALWAYS remove the broken blood feather regardless of if the bleeding has stopped. It can get knocked and start bleeding again when you arent around to do anything about it.

And YES pepper is better than flour for stopping bleeding

also! Keep an eye on them for the next while after you pull it. When I had to pull my boy budgie's feather it turned out it had not completely clotted, so he was still bleeding slowly without my knowledge until the other one screamed at me again.