Stop falling, Wheatley!

[echoskybound]

My green cheek Wheatley is about 6 months old now. His breeder clipped him and pulled a few broken tail feathers before I got him. He's going through a molt and has tons of tail feathers trying to grow in.

He's VERY convinced that he's going to learn to fly at any moment! He's getting more and more confident, despite not having a single successful flight, and no new flight feathers. He keeps unexpectedly trying to fly and plummeting to the ground. He's broken about 4 blood feathers in the past couple weeks (all were tail feathers, he hasn't managed to grow a single new tail feather, he keeps breaking them!) When I come home, he makes an attempt to fly to me, even though he's in his cage. I'm not sure how to keep him safe so that he's not falling all over the place!

I'm worried about him doing things like breaking blood feathers when I'm not around, or never growing his feathers back (I've been pulling the broken blood feathers, I'm worried about damaging the folicles.) I always try to distract him every time I see him thinking about flying... but he does it all the time!

Any suggestions?

 

[Pedro]

Seems his wing clip is a tad to short. His wings should have sufficent left so he can glide safely to the floor. His flights won't be replaced until he goes through his 12 month molt. At the moment he is going through his 6 month molt & will only loose small feathers, more noticable around the head. Wing & tail usually molt out yearly.
Once he has replace all his feathers in 12 months or there abouts he should have stronger tail feathers.

But i have to also say that some birds are on the clumsy side & keep breaking feathers. You could try letting him be flighted when all his feathers grow & see if that makes a difference.

 

[echoskybound]

Thank you, Pedro! I do intend to keep him flighted when his feathers grow back. I've been carefully watching all of the blood feathers coming in on the tail making sure they're in good shape (the breeder had pulled a few broken ones, so they're growing back in.) It looks like he had all of his primaries clipped.

Wheatley is very clumsy, but I think it's mainly his over-confidence about learning to fly that's causing him to fall a lot. I look forward to finally teaching the poor guy to fly when he gets his feathers! He wants to so badly!