Feather picking/overpreening in a quaker

[AbbeyV]

Hi there LaManuka,

My name's Abbey and I'm hoping you would mind sharing your experience with Feather imping that I read about on another post from a few years ago.

My partner and I have a 12mth old Alexandrine and has gone through a pretty rough wing clipping from the time he was a baby. Everytime he grows a new sheath and starts sprouting a feather, he knocks it on something only so slightly and it completely damages it. My local vet down here has suggested Imping and I'm trying to do some research into how the outcome will affect his feather growth in the future.

Would you mind sharing about ScoMo and his outcome after Imping?
I'm curious to know what happened down the track when his new feather grew through and he had a moult

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Abbey

 

[LaManuka]

Hi there LaManuka,

My name's Abbey and I'm hoping you would mind sharing your experience with Feather imping that I read about on another post from a few years ago.

My partner and I have a 12mth old Alexandrine and has gone through a pretty rough wing clipping from the time he was a baby. Everytime he grows a new sheath and starts sprouting a feather, he knocks it on something only so slightly and it completely damages it. My local vet down here has suggested Imping and I'm trying to do some research into how the outcome will affect his feather growth in the future.

Would you mind sharing about ScoMo and his outcome after Imping?
I'm curious to know what happened down the track when his new feather grew through and he had a moult

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Abbey

Hi @AbbeyV, of course I'm happy to share my results with feather imping with you! I've actually had it done more recently with another bird of mine, a princess parrot named Peachie, and you can find her thread here if you want to see some more pics of before/during/after her procedure ...

Introducing The New Adventures Of Princess Peach!! 💝

Ok, so you know how sometimes you walk into a shop meaning to buy one thing, and you come away with something totally different? Well, that happened to me just this last Saturday. Hubby and i went grocery shopping, but before that we needed to go to the hardware store, which just happens to be...

www.parrotforums.com

ScoMo was pretty rough on his implants and knocked a four or five of them out within the first two weeks. Sadly though, it seemed the minute he could fly again he became quite a bully towards Fang the cockatiel and I was in such fear of him doing Fang a serious injury that I ended up rehoming him. Peachie the princess parrot on the other hand has had a MUCH happier outcome She had hers done back in June 2023 and only managed to destroy one implanted feather, the remainder have all stayed in place until moulted out, and I think she's only got one or two implants left now. The implanted feathers just drop straight out exactly like a natural one, since it is implanted into what's left of their fight feather shaft after clipping. Here's a pic of two of Peachie's flight feathers, the one on the right is the implanted one, but my vet did SUCH a good job that it's hard to pick the difference between the two!

And here's a video about imping that was actually filmed at my bird vet for a kids TV show called "Totally Wild" waaaaaaayyyyy back, it gives a pretty good idea of the procedures involved ...

If your Alex is having troubles damaging his new feathers it may or may not be a great option for him, I guess it's just going to depend on how he reacts to having whole new flight feathers there that will seem to him that they've suddenly come from nowhere. I hope it works out for you if you do decide to go ahead!

 

[AbbeyV]

Hi @AbbeyV, of course I'm happy to share my results with feather imping with you! I've actually had it done more recently with another bird of mine, a princess parrot named Peachie, and you can find her thread here if you want to see some more pics of before/during/after her procedure ...

Introducing The New Adventures Of Princess Peach!! 💝

Ok, so you know how sometimes you walk into a shop meaning to buy one thing, and you come away with something totally different? Well, that happened to me just this last Saturday. Hubby and i went grocery shopping, but before that we needed to go to the hardware store, which just happens to be...

www.parrotforums.com

ScoMo was pretty rough on his implants and knocked a four or five of them out within the first two weeks. Sadly though, it seemed the minute he could fly again he became quite a bully towards Fang the cockatiel and I was in such fear of him doing Fang a serious injury that I ended up rehoming him. Peachie the princess parrot on the other hand has had a MUCH happier outcome She had hers done back in June 2023 and only managed to destroy one implanted feather, the remainder have all stayed in place until moulted out, and I think she's only got one or two implants left now. The implanted feathers just drop straight out exactly like a natural one, since it is implanted into what's left of their fight feather shaft after clipping. Here's a pic of two of Peachie's flight feathers, the one on the right is the implanted one, but my vet did SUCH a good job that it's hard to pick the difference between the two!

View attachment 57125

And here's a video about imping that was actually filmed at my bird vet for a kids TV show called "Totally Wild" waaaaaaayyyyy back, it gives a pretty good idea of the procedures involved ...

If your Alex is having troubles damaging his new feathers it may or may not be a great option for him, I guess it's just going to depend on how he reacts to having whole new flight feathers there that will seem to him that they've suddenly come from nowhere. I hope it works out for you if you do decide to go ahead!

That is amazing, thank you!

The Vet seems to think it's a good option, just depending on whether we can access "viable" feathers from a feather bank
I'm waiting to find out if we have access to feathers but at the moment, we're just mothering Nugget until we can either get some new feathers for him or hopefully they might eventually grow out.

It's super frustrating for both him and us because each time his new feathers poke out and finally seem to be getting somewhere, he damages them somehow. Our vet was able to get some photos for me today to see just how damaged some of the sheaths were but unfortunately they need to be pulled out so he can hopefully grow a new, stronger sheath to make imping a bit safer and more effective for him

It breaks my heart seeing him in pain which is why we normally will pull the sheath out once it's damaged but I didn't realised, he'd also gotten to a few of them himself before they'd really had a chance to grow. It's really difficult to tell the difference between healthy pruning/maintenance and plucking

 

[LaManuka]

That is amazing, thank you!

The Vet seems to think it's a good option, just depending on whether we can access "viable" feathers from a feather bank
I'm waiting to find out if we have access to feathers but at the moment, we're just mothering Nugget until we can either get some new feathers for him or hopefully they might eventually grow out.

It's super frustrating for both him and us because each time his new feathers poke out and finally seem to be getting somewhere, he damages them somehow. Our vet was able to get some photos for me today to see just how damaged some of the sheaths were but unfortunately they need to be pulled out so he can hopefully grow a new, stronger sheath to make imping a bit safer and more effective for him

It breaks my heart seeing him in pain which is why we normally will pull the sheath out once it's damaged but I didn't realised, he'd also gotten to a few of them himself before they'd really had a chance to grow. It's really difficult to tell the difference between healthy pruning/maintenance and plucking

You're most welcome, @AbbeyV! I guess part of Nugget's problem may be that as each new feather comes through, it's kind of sitting there all alone with no other feathers around to support it, so it's much more easily damaged? In which case it might be a good thing if he suddenly has a whole bunch of new feathers that can work together to support each other? I actually saw another imping procedure on TV only a few days ago - it was done on a galah and they had no galah wing feathers so they used some from a goshawk! Absolutely did not match colour or shape-wise, but they worked just fine. So maybe your vet might be able to do the job by using the "next best thing"