Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi. Have had my bird for about 6 months now. He was hand raised and is an awesome bird. When I purchased him his wings were clipped however I would like to give him the ability to fly around the room. Now he just jumps and crashes. As his clipped flight feathers are growing back I am finding quite a bit of dried blood on them, What could be causing this? I do not find any active bleeding just what appears to be dried blood
Foot Hill Reptiles

It sounds like when he was clipped they clipped some blood feathers (feathers still growing).

When they moult, old feathers fall out & new ones grow out. While they're growing they have a nerve going through the center of the feather & this is full of blood as it feeds the feather until it's fully grown. Once it's grown the full length the nerve retracts itself. Sometimes people clip feathers that're not fully grown which causes the nerve to be cut & this causes bleeding. It isn't recomended as they can bleed to death within minutes.

Give your tiel time to grow back his wings fully & time to gain some confidence to learn to fly properly. It is possible he's also been clipped before learning to fly so he doesn't have the strength he should have in his wings & crashes everywhere. Also if he's wings haven't fully grown back yet he will be a little unsteady with flying.

Thanks for replying. Yes his wings have been clipped his entire life. He was in human care since before he ever hatched and hand fed his whole life. This has made him an awesome bird. He even nibbles on my 1 year old daughters fingers as she giggles LOL He is such a sweet bird. The only thing I have to say about what you said is I have not clipped his wings since I have had him, They are still clipped from before I purchased him and this dry blood thing is new "just withing the past week" so its hard for me to logically blame clipping for it. his cage is 24" high, 18" long and 18" wide he dosnt even flap around in the cage or I would blaim a wing injury but all he dose is climb around. The only time he really tries to fly is when he is out and of course he just nose dives right to the ground
Foot Hill Reptiles

Since he is so tame gently search the area where you are noticing dried blood, move the feathers aside in that area to check for any injury. Many birds who have had too severe of a wing clip in the past will chew and bite at feathered areas when new feathers are growing in. It is believed that it may cause a bit of itching to the area which can make them use their beak to pick at the area. Sometimes this will cause damage to a blood feather which can bleed, most birds will go ahead and pull a feather out themselves if it starts to bleed if they can easily reach it. Then there won't be any sign of injury just the blood that was left although you may on occassions notice one or more feathers in or around the cage that also has a bit of dried blood on it. Also at times when they are overpreening an area that is growing in new feathers they may go too deep and damage the skin underneath causing a small scab or red place beneath the feathers.

Next I would ask what you are feeding him. I know this will sound funny but we have actually had some people think something serious was wrong with their bird because they have dried "blood" on their feathers and it will later be found out that whatever the bird had eaten in the last 24 hours had a red coloration to it making the birds fecal matter have a blood like appearance. Of course if your bird only eats seed or fresh foods that had no reddish color this could not be the case.

If all else fails and you notice this problem on more than one occassion a vet checkup would be in order.

Good luck!

Regardless I do plan a vet visit soon. I feed mixed food from my local pet store. It was what was recommended at the time of purchase and what they fed them there so I stuck with it. It dose have some red die but I am absolutely sure this is dried blood and not coloration from the food. He is peacefully sleeping in the office now so I will wait until morning and give him a check up.
Foot Hill Reptiles