Damaged feathers or something else??

[crabshel]

As a few of you know, I rescued a pigeon a few days ago from my front yard. He (or she) can't fly and generally hates us. He had blood at the tip of one of his wings, but holds them normally against his body. It took a couple days to catch him, but has been in a large dog carrier kennel for a couple days now. Anyway, he's calmed down some from the whole catching event..drinking, eating well, etc. He charges us and can be aggressive when we open the cage door, so we haven't done a full examination on him (for fear he'll injure himself even worse in the process). Anyway, from what we can tell, his wings seem ok. He holds them normally and we can't see any obvious indication of a break. But, I did notice that his tail feathers are somewhat tattered looking and the end of his wing is too. How do I tell if its feather damage that is preventing flight? I am sorry, but aside from chickens (which obviously we don't deal with this kind of issue ), we don't know anything about birds. Thank you all SO much. Also, how long should we wait before seeing if he can fly again? Right now, he doesn't flap his wings..., just the typical stretching (which mind you we can hear, but he won't do in front of us).

[Pidgey]

They can damage their feathers in any of many ways. When they do, they're not going to be fixed until they molt out, which can be up to a year down the road. If you want to speed that up, you have to pluck the damaged feather so that it'll grow back. Before you go doing that, however, it'd be good to post a picture of the damaged feathers so that we can figure out whether they're bad enough to need it.

Pidgey

[crabshel]

Thanks Pidgey, I'll do a search on damaged feathers. Also, is it common for pigeons to be SO quiet? He has NEVER made a peep in the all the time he was outside and now indoors.

[crabshel]

Ok, I looked online and it definitely isn't the kind of damage I saw on other webpages (bleeding feathers, splinters, etc). I uploaded some pictures of him today.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22981273@N04/
His left wing is the one that looks a little funny to my ignorant eyes and his tail feathers are a little odd. I have no idea what is wrong with this bird, but I want to help him! He's obviously not too young to fly, so that is not it, nor does he seem ill.

[Charis]

Maybe he just needs some rest. From what I could tell, his tail feathers don't look all that bad to me...at little worn at the end but that should take care of itself when he molts.
Pigeons love bricks to stand on. Do you have a brick you could put in the kennel for him?
It also would be great if you could take a picture of his poop.
What are you feeding him?

[Pidgey]

It's difficult to make an assessment from those pictures. The quickest possibility that I see which may or may not be correct is that the left wingtip is jutting upward. That's sometimes a symptom of a broken coracoid bone. You can study the skeletal drawings here:

http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/skeleton.html

A broken coracoid will usually mean that the shoulder is involved and the bird may never fly again. Without a very practiced hand to feel the shoulder, you'd usually need an X-Ray to confirm it.

Can you take a picture from directly over the bird? That might help us visualize the symmetry of the wings.

Pidgey

[crabshel]

Picture 0015 and 0013 in the link have pictures of his poop. It can be enlarged I think. If not, I will zoom in on one and post it. Based on my experience with the chickens, his poop looks normal. He seems fairly regular, no odd odor, not runny, no weird color and both solid stool and normal white urates.
He has a wood block that he occasionally stands on, but for some reason he really likes the back opposite corner. Let me see if I can get a picture of him from overhead to show you guys that shoulder that Pidgey is questioning.

[Charis]

OK. I saw the poop and it looks good.
What kind of wood chips do you have him on? Any wood that smells good like cedar, or pine is very bad for birds as it can damage their lungs.
What are you feeding him?

[crabshel]

The wood is from a deciduous tree from my sister-in-laws front yard and it has no distinctive odor. It is also a softer wood, so it won't have sharp hard splinter that will hurt his feet. The food is Kaytee Supreme Fortified Daily Blend for doves. The first ingredients are white millet, milo, wheat, canadian field peas, red millet, canary grass seed, popcorn, safflower, oat groans, ground yellow corn, ground wheat, etc. I posted a few more pictures, but I can't get my arm far enough in the back to get one directly overhead. Once David gets home from work, I can have his help and see if we can take some really good pictures of his wings. His right wing sets nicely and I can't see a difference between the flight feathers on the wing and the ones on the tail, but his left wing looks odd. I finally saw him stretch and he uses both wings.

[Charis]

Sounds good. We'll wait for more pictures.

[TAWhatley]

I sure could be wrong, but the left wing looks pretty normal to me. It looks to me like the right wing is missing the flight feathers ??? I'll be interested to see the additional pictures when Crabshel is able to post them.

S/he is quite a handsome pigeon!

Terry

[crabshel]

Ok...I feel REALLY stupid (but I was never able to really see him flap his wings as well as we just saw), but I think Terry is right. His right wing looks like it is missing half his wing when he flaps! He HATES us and was not particularly thrilled with his trying to pick him up (as you can see in the pics I just posted).
( http://www.flickr.com/photos/22981273@N04/ ) He even left his wings scrunched forward when David held him. He wasn't about to let us look at his wing, but at least we saw what appears to be the problem. I'd have taken a picture when he flaps, but he is hopping all over the place, so it would have just been a blur. It makes sense why we saw blood (though I thought it was the left side, I am sure I just remember in incorrectly). Theoretically once he molts and they grow back, he can be released again, right? It seems so odd that ALL of his primary flight feathers seem to be gone (and that I didn't notice it before!). I wonder why... How long does the molting last for pigeons? Will having him in capitivity for so long affect him being able to be released in the future? I mean, he's a beautiful bird and we'd keep him, but he was born in the wild and I am sure would much rather live there.

[TerriB]

The missing, frazzled feathers look like what might happen if a cat or dog made contact and the bird got away.

[crabshel]

Well, that'd make sense. The cats and dogs, and coyotes for that matter, are exactly why we brought him in!

[Pidgey]

It's usually the tail feathers that go from a dog or cat grab. Losing the primary flight feathers is what happened to Winston:

http://www.pigeons.biz/forums/showthread.php?t=11280

Pidgey