# time it should take for feathers to grow out? uneven wings?



## jojo09 (Oct 9, 2010)

so the day that i brought gary home with me, his wings were clipped at the pet shop. this was probably around four to five months ago. since gary has come home i've seen him lose a couple of feathers, but i don't think it was anything serious. but now his wings seem really uneven. you can clearly tell where his feathers were clipped on his right wing and they still seem super short. yet the left wing looks almost completely normal. he wont let me play with them, otherwise i would look a little closer. how long should it take for his wings to be back to normal after a clipping? this seems abnormal to me. obviously it affects his flight and it makes me feel bad.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Feathers don't grow continuously like hair - instead they grow out when an old feather is molted and replaced. Gary has molted unevenly so he has more long feathers on one side than the other. 

Supposedly cockatiels molt symmetrically, losing the same feather on both sides at about the same time. Nobody told my birds about this though and their molting is a lot more random. Apparently Gary's is too. 

The question is what to do about it. If you want him to stay clipped you can just get the left wing trimmed again. If you want him to be full flighted you'll have to wait for him to molt. It's physically possible to speed up the process by plucking out the clipped feathers but this is painful for the bird and not a generally recommended procedure. If you wanted to compromise you could clip a couple of feathers on the left wing so he's not as unbalanced, and then wait for mother nature to do the rest.


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

Haha, tielfan that's hilarious...same with mine too! Apparently nobody told Fuzzy he was supposed to grow wings at all...if we clip his wings, it takes months and months for them to grow back even though he's a pretty strong flier even clipped. But I'd go with what tielfan said and probably try to make them even so flying is a little easier for him.


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## Belinda (Oct 9, 2010)

Yeah, it takes months, that's why I had Arnie imped (feather extensions) when the breeder did a bad clip, because he was flying and crashing all the time. That's always an option if there's someone who does it locally for you and you can afford to fork the money out (it is expensive).


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## jojo09 (Oct 9, 2010)

hmmm...i might just leave him be. he does a really good job getting from point A to point B. i just think the pet store did an awful job clipping his wings so i don't want to make the other wing equally bad if i know he can get around okay.


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