# Bird keeps breaking tailfeathers



## Tiiah (Feb 7, 2012)

My cockatiel is sweet but very easily excited. He is so attached to certain people in our family that he happily jumps right off his cage to them - unfortunately his wings are clipped and no matter how many times he tries, the bird can't stop landing on his butt.

At first it was okay. It's normal for tails to break every so often and I'm okay at pulling them out, but every week we seem to get more and more incidents to the point where my bird now has no tail at all - I think I've pulled as many tail feathers as possible because it's so hard to see the break or where exactly he's bleeding.

I really just need some suggestions on how to handle this. I would like my bird to grow a tail, and more importantly, with his rear all bloody all the time I worry that he will catch some sort of infection. I've also noticed dark bumps at the base of some of his broken feathers. I suppose those are just blood clots but just wants to make sure it wasn't anything worse.


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## Dekey (Apr 21, 2011)

Maybe you should let his flight feathers grow back ?


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## Tiiah (Feb 7, 2012)

Yes I'm letting them grow back, but it's taking a while and till then he keeps high-diving from his cage.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

You need to stop pulling the tail feathers. It's painful for your bird and could eventually damage the feather follicles to the point that he can no longer grow feathers there. Let him have broken tail feathers until he molts them naturally, it won't look super attractive but there's no harm in it.

If you can't stop him from jumping off the cage, then keep him inside the cage until his tail feathers have grown out to the point that they are no longer blood feathers. If you take him out before that point, put him in a place where he can't fall for a long distance and break a blood feather. 

After the blood feather stage has passed, any feathers that get broken should be left in place. Your birdie needs to let his rear end heal, and pulling feathers unnecessarily won't let that happen.


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