Cockatiel with a bloody feather

[milti_girl]

Hello, I'm new here. I live in India. My college has a birds park with many birds. One huge cage contains cockatiels. Recently I took a fancy to observing them...And I simply love doing that! There are 9 in the cage, and most are the grey kind, but there are two Lutinos. The two Lutinos are both boys (I think), but I called one of them Lily and the other (supposed to be 'her' mate, though I'm not very sure) Ducky. Lily has a feather under her tail that seems to be bent. It seems to be clotted with some sort of dirt, which I suspect is dried blood. There's a bird I called Brownie, who keeps running behind Lily and tugging at the hanging tail feather. She's very persistant! (Brownie.) Sometimes Lily tries to avoid Brownie and pecks at her in irritation when Brownie pulls at her tail. At other times she seems not to mind. Also, Lily likes the sound of my voice, and when I whistle, she drops whatever she's doing and comes running to my corner. She begins to climb my side of the wall of the cage using her beak and claws. She seems to be quite friendly, single-minded, and lost in her own world.

I have never owned birds before. I'm trying to figure out the cockatiels' puzzling behaviour by going and observing them everyday. We aren't allowed to take them out of the cage but I mean to alert the cleaners of the cage if something is seriously wrong with Lily.

[My Peanuts]

That sounds like a blood feather and it needs to be removed by someone that knows how like a vet or trained bird handler. Blood feathers can be deadly because cockatiels don't have a lot of blood and even a little blood is a lot to them. If the feather has clotted and stopped bleeding it can break open and start again. The broken feather must be removed.

[Argranade]

Blood feathers ehh..hmmm my Feather footed pigeon gets them sometimes growing bad out of his foot sometimes they bleed alot then other time's they dont.

What I do is I pull them out very fast then aply presure in the area where I pulled the feather out then if it bleeds I give my bird a small amount of Salt to restore there blood loss.

If your too scared to try this take the bird to a vet or if the blood feather is hanging just wait for it too fall off and if the bird starts bleeding just aply presure to the wound.

But since you dont know much about your bird a vet would be a good option.

Good luck.

[Logan]

Sounds like it needs to be pulled (plucked). This can be done, easily, by someone who has the right sized tweezers to grab it and get it out. I hope they will help her soon.

Logan