Ask Lafeber

7month old Quaker parrot

I was cleaning the inside of my Quaker parrots’ cage while he was purching on the play ground on top of cage when suddenly the bedroom door flew open and our small family dog had followed my daughter in the room. The dog barked and scared the parrot and parrot flew off the play ground and landed closer to the dog.the dog grabbed 3of the tail feathers and pulled them out , but didn’t get ahold of the body, I had grabbed dog and put dog out of room before he could do anything else so no body injuries happened. I took the bird to the vet and the vet checked the bird out and said everything was fine, but couldn’t answer my question as to whether or not the feathers will grow back..one of the 3 feathers that were pulled out had a small drop of blood on the end where it had been pulled out.I am wanting to know if those tail feathers will grow back ? by the way I have the Quaker parrot on laefebers pellets ,avicakes and nutri berries.

Hi,

I’m glad the bird wasn’t seriously injured, and you did good by taking him to the vet. The tail feathers should grow back. It doesn’t sounds like there was any damage to the follicles. It sounds like he has just molted or is molting now, and one of the tail feathers was new and almost finished growing in since there was just a drop of blood. All feathers are supplied by blood as they are growing in, and then the blood source dries up. Now he may grow all of those lost feathers at one time, so be very careful because if a feather is broken while it is still growing, the bird can bleed to death if the rest of the feather isn’t pulled out. This was a close call and a lesson learned, so time for a family meeting to remind everyone that dogs can be a huge risk to a pet bird. More parrots are killed by dogs than cats in homes.  Sounds like your little guy will be fine and you should see some feathers coming in within a few weeks.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda