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Facts

WIng Clipping Parrots Is Unnatural

Wing clipping your parrot is unnatural. Birds were made to fly. Any bird in the wild unable to fly would not survive. Sad but true.

Clipping a birds wings is to all intents and purposes like de-barking a dog or de-clawing a cat. Most people find these unacceptable. You might say that wing clipping is not the same as the above, as the flight feathers will re-grow as a de-barked dog would not regain its bark or a cat its claws.

You would be correct to a certain extent but what about the birds who have their wings clipped (or hacked at) by someone inexperienced or uncaring? - Back to this subject further down the page.
In captive bred birds it is usually the young birds which are clipped. Birds just weaned and off to their first home. This being on the pretence of saving the bird from itself. The owner not wanting the bird to fly into objects around the house, into saucepans, into windows, eat the furniture or fly out of doors.

Let's take a step back. This is not to save the bird from itself, but to save the owner from having to watch the bird, keep check, wipe the poo from the carpets etc and lastly not worry about leaving doors and windows open. After all keeping all these checks every day is hard work???

Any fully flighted young bird will succumb to a few minor accidents like flying into your expensive vase or onto your pelmet and start to chew it. This is the same as having a few accidents if they were reared by their parents in an aviary environment or in the wild. You seriously did not think that they exited the nest box for the first time and immediately turned into concorde did you?
They are extremely intelligent and they do learn. Like children falling off a bike, they DO get the hang of it.

Young birds who have their flight feathers clipped do not ever become good fliers even if their flight feathers are left intact in subsequent years. They need the power of flight to strengthen their chest muscles. If they are denied this from a young age the chest muscles never develop fully enough for the bird to be able to fly at speed or with grace, some never fly at all after the first wing clip. The ones that do usually end up like stealth bombers.

There is also the safety aspect of wing clipping. There safety is compromised in times of danger, such as not being able to get away from a dog or cat. 

Escapism

Do not think that because your bird is clipped that it will not be able to fly at all and/or escape - wrong.  

Please read the following paragraph from 'Wing Clipping In Pet Birds' by A K Jones BVetMed MRCVS

'There is also discussion among veterinarians as to whether one or both wings should be clipped. I generally cut only one side, on the basis that I have seen birds still fly, given a strong under draught, with a bilateral clip. However, the majority opinion seems to be that both wings should be cut.'

Even then they can still fly depending on where the cuts are on the feathers.

Also remember that wing clipping is not permanent and needs to be re-done at least once a year, maybe after the first cut sooner than this, depending at what stage the feathers are in growth when cut. 

Behaviour Problems

There are also psychological problems encountered with wing clipping. Some birds become feather pluckers and/or develop behavioural problems. There can be many reasons for this but they undoubtedly become frustrated, a birds natural instinct is to fly. What wing clipping does is take away what is their God given right - the power of flight. Plus the cut feathers may cause irritiation to the bird so they pick at them to remove them and so it starts.  

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Clipped or hacked?

Many young birds which are clipped by the inexperienced keeper or vet (or importer) do have problems in re-growing their flight feathers normally. It has been known to take up to three years for a complete new set of feathers to appear. Again some never regain them properly at all. If the feather is cut too short and cut into the blood feathers or wing itself, this can cause deformities within the new feather.

Also when re-growing new feathers these are filled with blood and are far more susceptible to damage from accidents such as the bird trying to fly and crash landing. In a normal situation of a fully flighted bird the 'blood feathers' do have the protection of the other flight feathers around, in a clipped bird this is not the case and hence they are easily damaged.

If a blood feather is knocked and bleeds this must be stopped, a bird can bleed to death from a knocked blood feather.

Who benefits?

If you really do want to have your birds wings clipped ask yourself why? For whose benefit, yours or the bird?

It is relatively easy to keep doors and windows shut, draw curtains or net across glass windows until the bird becomes used to the fact that there is glass there and it is not an open space. Don't let your bird onto your furniture if you do not want it to be there and keep your bird out of the kitchen at all costs! The kitchen is full of dangers for a bird; wing clipped or not, toxic fumes, sharp objects, open windows .......

Caution is needed introducing your bird to any dogs you have in the home, but they again do get used to having them around. Cats are another matter. We have cats but they do not under any circumstances come into the house near the birds. They can at any time pounce on top of cages and cause untold damage, not to mention the stress your bird will be under as a cat is a natural predator. 

Do not let your bird out of its cage into the room unsupervised. Nothing else to say on that.

Whilst we do not condone the indiscriminate wing clipping of pet birds, very occasionally wing clipping can be beneficial to the birds to enable them to have more freedom, but this is only very occasionally and in exceptional circumstances.

Click below for Pearl's story:

Wing Clipping - Different strokes

Aviary birds

Whilst we do not condone the indiscriminate wing clipping of pet birds, it is at times necessary to 'slow down' certain birds in an aviary environment. Certain breeding birds such as cockatoos can become extremely aggressive to the point of killing their mate if they come into breeding condition before their mate. Chasing and harassing the female up and down the flight ending in the female being massacred. This is not because the pair are incompatible. It is just what cockatoos do in captivity - it has not been recorded in the wild. So we can assume keeping birds in captivity does cause psychological problems.

However that is another matter for a different page on a different day.

In circumstances where the male is harassing the female a number of primary flight feathers can be removed from the male, either from one side or both sides. This does not stop the male from flying it just slows him down to give the female a chance.

However this should only be carried out if absolutely necessary and by an experience person or avian vet.

Fiction

Lastly, below is a passage in favour of wing clipping, mainly because the owner does not want to keep the doors and windows shut and because she feels that she cannot control her bird when it is fully flighted.

'When most people hear of wing clipping they are mortified. Let me clear up a few common misunderstandings. Wing clippings are not painful. The actual feather doesn't have nerves, and your not pulling it out, you're just trimming them. The whole thing is very much like cutting ones hair or nails. Secondly, wing clipping is not cruel. What's cruel is not clipping your birds wings and having it fly out into the wilderness to perish. There are many, many, positives to wing clipping. One of the major reasons I clip my birds wings is to keep her behaviour in check. Being an "aggressive female". She is prone to biting, destroying anything and everything she gets her beak on, and refusing to step up or return to her cage unless she feels like it. With her wings clipped she is much more friendlier, only bites when threatened, and the urge to destroy everything leaves her. She is also much more cuddlier with her wings clipped.'

If the main reason you want your birds wings clipped is because you feel in control, then you need to re-think why it is that you want a bird in the first instance, is it a dominance factor - you will do as I say or else?

Birds are just that - birds. They were not meant to be in cages in your living room, so if they are, they should be afforded the same respect as another human being and this means thinking about what is best for them, not you.  

They are delightful creatures and dominance should not be part of the deal, if your bird has respect for you as you have for it, then the relationship can work and the bird will 'behave' because it wants to - not because it can't get away from you!

Against wing clipping logo © and courtesy of Birds Online

Do you have any photos/stories of badly clipped birds you would like to share?