- Well, this was unexpected.
I was working with my birds, my macaws today, hey buddy,
and some bleeding going on, I noticed.
And the other thing and found out that
this guy has a broken blood feather.
(upbeat ethereal music)
All right, you guys are always asking about pin feathers.
I'm going to show you what they look like.
'Cause Comet's molting,
He just had a bath, but he's mostly dry.
I see some wet spots.
So I'm gonna show some pin feathers on his head.
(Comet caws)
Let's find some, buddy, there's one.
So you see how that's more of like
almost a needle looking thing.
And then you can actually, not all birds like this,
but you can see little flakes are coming off
and that's from pinching the outer part off.
- I know, you got some on your head mostly,
but let's see if we can.
Can you put your head down for me real quick?
Find some?
Now they're really little. So I'm going to be hard to find.
So I'll show you his tail instead.
So here on his tail,
he has two feathers coming in and
that is what's wrapped around.
So that's what happens on his head as well.
You get this wrapped around and this is what they preen off.
So they can literally peel this off of the feather
you can see that I can peel it off myself.
And then the feather, the new feather comes in.
(macaw vocalizing)
(mumbles) Good boy, thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for being my model thanks for being my model, aww.
Well, this was unexpected.
I was working with my birds, my macaws today, hey buddy,
and some bleeding going on, I noticed.
And the other thing and found out that this guy
has a broken blood feather.
That's in trade of letting me stop
the bleeding on your tail.
I know, shh.
Shh, it's okay.
Which one is it?
I know, it's okay.
Found it.
It's okay, it's okay shh.
(shushing)
I know, buddy, I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
It's actually not too bad.
I know, (shushes).
Trying not to touch it so it doesn't hurt him.
Dave should be home soon.
Definitely have stopped the bleeding,
but it's painful for this guy.
You guys can see that.
It's just a little bit, but it's painful.
I know you're being very good about it.
Ugh, so.
Buddy it's not going to be the best day for you.
Not going to be a very good day for you.
I know.
- [Capri] Did you look in his cage he used to be in?
- Yeah, it didn't happen in his cage,
it happened while he was hanging out on a play stand.
I think maybe when I put him and Tusa together,
He, um, - yeah, I think,
- They were preening each other.
And I think maybe he got a blood feather.
I'm not do anything right now.
He knows it's gonna get worse.
You can still eat that.
He knows something is up.
So this is a great reason to always have your
birdie first aid kit.
If you don't have one,
you can order them off of Amazon.
This is the one I have that I keep, I keep multiples.
So we have them in our trailer for a bird trailer for when
we travel, we have them at home.
Oops, sorry.
So we also have them here at home and it has this styptic
powder that you can use to stop any bleeding
to clot it and stuff.
I know some people use like cornmeal and things like that.
(murmuring)
Where, oh, down here?
- Yeah.
- That was from before I clotted it.
I'll just check.
- There's two other drips over there, by you?
- Yeah, that was from before honey, before I clotted it.
But thank you.
Buddy, you know something's up, huh.
So you can definitely tell it's tender.
This thing is painful for this guy.
I got really scared because I noticed quite a bit of blood
and could not tell where it was coming from.
It wasn't just dripping obviously off of something.
I actually thought maybe he was pooping blood
at first, when I saw it.
I'm gonna show you guys what it looked like.
This is the little bit from when I moved him and tried to
figure out where it was coming from.
There's that, and then there was a couple bright red spots.
So that was when I saw it on the other stand and moved him.
But if you look, all I saw was this dot of blood
here on the right side,
which was not enough to go off of.
I was like, where is it coming from?
And then when I started examining his body and he didn't
want me to touch his tail, which is not normal for him,
I knew that the pain was coming from his tail.
So this is the play stand that him and Tusa were on.
Some nasty poops for you.
And this was the blood that I originally saw
and like freaked out.
And I examined each bird one by one.
Determined it was not Tusa or Jinx,
because I had all my macaws out,
but Jinx was on this play stand.
So I knew by examining the bottom, it wasn't him.
So he went away first, realized it wasn't Tusa
put him away, saw something was up with this guy,
sourced to the feather by then it had
stopped bleeding as much,
completely clotted it and stopped the bleeding.
And now I'm just waiting for Dave to come in and be my
reinforcements to help put a complete end to this.
This is really interesting because this issue was something
I was thinking about filming while
I was in Australia, with a vet.
But I remember thinking like, well,
I don't really want to talk about it if I can't show it.
So I guess I should have videotaped it with the vet
and just, you've been able to use this stuff.
So, but now I'm able to talk about it.
So it's really important to understand what to do when you
have a broken blood feather,
and the first thing is just stop the bleeding.
First and foremost, stop the bleeding.
I will leave a link in the description to a really
informative blog post on the subject.
Yeah, second thing is try to
prevent the bleeding from happening.
Step two requires Dave.
So I'm waiting on that one,
but I will show you guys what it looks like.
So I'm really not sure how this blood feather
suddenly got broken.
My only thought is that I was doing some
flight training with Tusa and Jinx.
Comet wasn't really wanting to participate when he took one
flight, a feather came out like just molted out.
So they're all molting pretty heavily,
which usually makes them uncomfortable for flight.
And so he was the most reluctant
and then him and Tusa were preening.
So I'm wondering if Tusa might accidentally done it or.
(Capri mumbling) Okay, thanks.
(hopeful music)
I hope this helps you guys.
I hope you enjoy seeing some of this,
those of you that are into this side of things.
I thought it was really interesting to understand the inner
workings kind of have a feather because for the most part,
I only see molted feathers and most of the feathers are
hollow.
And so to see an actual blood feather and understand that
those are, that's a lot of blood and that's a lot of
veins going in there.
I don't know.
I just thought it was really cool and educational.
So hope you guys enjoyed this day more than me or Comet.
It's a little too exciting for us.
(upbeat music)