Everytime my 4 year old walks in the room, Petey will kamakazi off his play pen to get to her. I don't mind it, in fact it is really cute that she can rescue him off the floor, but he is breaking his tail feathers and it looks really bad. Is there a way I can stop him from doing this? Is broken tail feathers just a regular thing for birds and should I worry about it? He does not seem to be hurting himself any..just kind of concerned.


Thanks!

Christine

hmmm, I really don't know how to answer that. Sounds like he is not very old and with time he will stay on the cage. I remember in the beginning with Kiwi, he would fly off of his cage or playstand and then I would just put him back time after time and then he just got to the point where he wouldn't do it anymore. I never had a problem with broken tail feathers tho. Kind of bumping this up for others to read and maybe help......

I'll be interested to see what others say on this. My cockatiel who's only 8 months old does the same thing and his tail feathers are messy too.

My tiel used to break tail feathers the same way, but it has improved. I don't think that she was ever aloud to learn to fly, so she dropped pretty hard. After her first molt, I let her grow in her flight feathers, and taught her to fly. Since I am not a bird, I guess I didn't do a great job, because she tends to hover more than fly. But once she started to go up too high, I clipped her. But only enough so that she can not get any lift. Now she can fly from her cage to the couch, but not up. No more broken feathers. Tiki came clipped, but could fly none the less. I had to clip him more so that he would just glide to the floor. He has never broken a tail feather. So what I am saying I guess is that after your bird molts, make sure that he is not clipped too severely, so that he can glide a bit, rather than drop to the floor.

Actually, Pete is 13 We have only had him about a month and a half. He is doing awesome, otherwise. He is clipped, in fact, we had it done shortly after we got him. He had never been clipped before and has done really well, considering. I have no idea why he does this. It is sort of a concern, but not entirely, I guess. He seems really happy in fact. Never screams, does well for the most part with everyone.We are in the process of converting him to pellets and he actually eats them now. He was on a seed and fresh food diet with his other owners. We have 6 kids altogether and he seems to have bonded with the smallest ones..and me of course. LOL..I am his birdy bird. Thanks for the responses...Hopefully he will lose with infatuation with my 4 year old. She LOVES it though!!

Christine