Broken Blood Feather

We had our first real scare yesterday. Odin broke a blood feather on his wing and was making pain sounds (something between a chirp and a hiss). He was bleeding a little bit. After doing some Google searches we were practically convinced he was going to drop dead.



I tried calling a few 24-hour animal clinics and wasn't able to get much help. One woman said we could try to pull it out ourselves. I asked if she really thought that was a good idea considering we've never done anything like that before and she said "Probably not". Thanks for the advice...

We put some cornstarch on the feather to stop the bleeding (it worked pretty quickly). He slept in his carrier cage again so he wouldn't be able to thrash around much if he got scared. When we woke up he had removed most of the feather, but he still had about an inch long piece of quill in there (full of blood, of course).

We brought him to the vet first thing this morning so she could have a look at the feather. She gave him a checkup, weighed him (104 grams), and pulled out the rest of the feather. He did really well and is now resting. We took out more perches in his cage so he can only hang around on the bottom while he recovers.