What do you do with your birds' feathers?

[MomtoPercy]

When I first got Percy, I read online that one should keep the feathers they loose naturally and later tie them together to hang in the cage to serve as a "preening buddy". So, I've kept every feather he's dropped that was 2" or bigger.
I'm wondering if this "preening buddy" concept won't encourage or cause over-preening. What do you think?
Percy is a "lazy preener" LOL. He preens his body and upper wings diligently and will occassionally give his wings some attention, but seems to love his tail to have that "lived in look" (raggedy). Except for the tail tips that are somewhat raggedy, he has beautiful feathers and I don't want to encourage over preening.
What is your opinion on this? Do you keep the feathers your birds loose and if so, what do you do with them?
It is currently molting season in my country and he's starting to loose his big wing feathers now.
Oh, one last question - usually, I retrieve the feathers from his cage but yesterday I caught him with a huge pen feather in his beak. It had obviously come come out naturally (no sign of any trauma) but he was 'playing' really viciously with it, ripping at it, doing his angry head bobbing thing and growling. Was this just rough play do you think?

 

[WannaBeAParrot]

I hadn't heard of a preening buddy with the feathers. Interesting concept but not sure how to advise. Pritti will run a molted long feather through his beak a few times; there's somethng in the "root" part they like to get at. Normal.

Here's what I do with them... Wall Art. Been adding to it for years.

 

[JerseyWendy]

Superglue them to my husband's hair...wherever I see bald spots?

JUST KIDDING!!!!!

I honestly just toss them. :54:

 

[MomtoPercy]

I hadn't heard of a preening buddy with the feathers. Interesting concept but not sure how to advise. Pritti will run a molted long feather through his beak a few times; there's somethng in the "root" part they like to get at. Normal.

Here's what I do with them... Wall Art. Been adding to it for years.

Cute idea!

 

[Terry57]

You just gave me a great idea for a Christmas ornament! Thank you

 

[Megapixel]

My avatar is a glass of tail and flight feathers that I collected over the years from my late blue-crown conure (see sig pic). His were the only feathers I saved. 15-20 years ago I had a friend with some conures and she saved a few feathers and kept them displayed in a nice small vase. I started saving the nicest feathers and being a guy, I kept them on display in a beer glass.

Now that he's gone, I'm glad I did save his feathers and I'm thinking that I should save feathers from my other birds too.

 

[noblemacaw]

I have always saved my boys best feathers mainly from the tail and wings. I have had a fan made of Mihijo's tail feathers. He was my oldest bird so I had a LOT of feathers from him.

Of my three boys that have went to the Rainbow Bridge I have used their feathers to decorate their scrapbooks. It seemed every time one of the boys passed is when I made their albums. I have made a promise to myself I would not wait to make Valentino's but will construct his as I go. So far I have started "My First Year With Valentino" album.

I have a smaller parrot tin I kept the smaller parrots feathers in. Now that I have Valentino I realized by the tail feathers alone the special tin would not fit his feathers so I bought a empty silverware wooden box from a thrift store and sanded off the original coat, decorated the top and made it into "Valentino's Treasures" box. So far it fits all his feathers even his longest tail feather which is about 24 inches long. Here is a pic of his feather box.

 

[getwozzy]

I save all of the nice and clean feathers I can; with Jackie I only ended up with about half a dozen before he passed away. I finally found them the other day; it's nice to have something tangible of theirs when they're gone.

So far I've made a necklace to remember him by

And the rest I was thinking of making a dream catcher with; not sure yet.

 

[Birdman666]

Mine play with their molted feathers all the time. It's normal...

The only feathers I bother to save are the really pretty long macaw tail feathers.

Hadn't thought of making toys with them, but I bet it would work.

 

[cnyguy]

This year, Ralph has been molting gradually for several months, and I've been collecting his molted feathers in a bowl I usually use for stray parrot toys or toy parts (after Ralph disassembles them ). One day, I decided I ought to do something with them. I found an empty picture frame and a piece of mat board, and arranged a few of Ralph's feathers on the mat board, added a few of George's feathers that I'd saved for a long time, and came up with this:

 

[MomtoPercy]

Wow, those are such great ideas!! Thanks for sharing. I would much rather make something pretty with Percy's gorgeous feathers than have his 'naughty beaky' (what I say to him when he's being bitey ) rip them up!

 

[antoinette]

Superglue them to my husband's hair...wherever I see bald spots?

JUST KIDDING!!!!!

I honestly just toss them. :54:

LoL Thanks Wendy I needed at good laugh so early in the morning

 

[antoinette]

I have been collecting Mishka feathers, all sizes for over 2 years now.
They are placed in a beautiful golden box, still undecided what to do with them
Thanks for some of the wonderful ideas !!!

 

[Heidielise]

I am going to artfully arrange them/ add them to the bows on my Christmas gifts.

 

[Nathan1]

This is a very interesting thread, some creative ideas on here.

Personally I just toss them, but I've always wanted to put them to good use...Just don't know what to do with them.

 

[GaryBV]

Wow I loved some of the things I've seen in this thread, particularly Wanna's 'art' on the wall - i loved that, and I loved the feathers in the glass jar. My birds are all small, and I have never saved a feather from them (although I do have a collection of turkey feathers I've picked up outside as well as some from bluejays, both species are rather common here. I do know that the Aztecs and other Meso-American peoples used bird feathers to make flags that would float in the slightest breeze, and they also would make 'paintings' using different naturally colored feathers as the 'paint.' I don't think that was a very good time to be a bird, and imagine if you were a bird that happened to possess a little patch of a certain color that was in demand. But I wish some of those had survived until today because I sure would have loved to see something like that.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

I hoard them lol I save all but badly damage feathers, or pooped on feathers. I have art ideas, like I finally have a full tail set from Rosie so I'm going to frame the "tail" and hang it in my wall. I also give feathers to one of my friends who likes to mess around trying to make jewelry and stuff. Feathers are just too pretty to throw out, so many uses for them.

Rosie's I keep in a 3 pound Lafeaber's nutri berry tub, Kenji has less so I keep his in a small nutri berry tub. Then I have a vase filled with various bird species, most are from before I adopted Rosie. Now I worry about bringing disease in and only take in the most special feathers that I sanitize.

 

[BruceV]

I only have 2 so far. My conure holds on to hers tight because she had a dog rip her tail off about a year ago. So she doesn't give them up. Simba has given me 2, and they're sitting on my desk here until I decide what to do with them. Maybe I'll frame the first one...like a "first dollar" thing in a business...but completely different.

 

[WannaBeAParrot]

Maybe I'll frame the first one...like a "first dollar" thing in a business...but completely different.

Ahhhhh. If only we devoted parronts could turn them into dollars.... imagine how more spoiled our fids would be....

 

[crackerjack]

how do you sanitize a feather?