hi! i’m sarah and i’m here at extra careanimal hospital today, and on behalf of expertvillage.com i’m going to tell you a little bit aboutowning a lovebird. as far as caring for your bird’s nails, beak and wings, at your firstvisit with your avian veterinarian, they can go over wing, beak and nail care with you.generally, we do recommend having your bird’s wings trimmed, because there is a lot thatthese guys can get into out in a household that they are fully flighted. some thingsthat we see birds do in household situations when they are fully flighted is escape, whichobviously is very hard to get a bird this size back. once they’re gone, generallythey are gone for good, and that will be a heartbreak that i’m sure nobody wants todeal with. other things that can happen is
we’ve seen birds fly into windows, intoaquariums, boiling pots of water, oil etc, things like that, buckets of detergent. we’veseen birds fly into ceiling fans. all kinds of things in household situations that birdscan be seriously injured or we have actually seen birds get killed by because they werefully flighted. you may be comfortable doing the wing trims at home. if you are interestedin learning how to do wing trims at home, your avian veterinarian can do a demonstrationon how to do that. when your bird’s wings are being trimmed, the only feathers thatshould be trimmed are the outer 8-10 feathers. if you are ever taking your bird somewhereand they are trimming the whole entire wing, you should politely tell them to stop andtake your bird elsewhere. if you trim all
of the bird’s feathers, this will lenderthem completely incapable of having a nice soft landing should they get startled andjump off their cage or off a counter or off of some other high place. the outer 8-10 featherson your bird’s wings are used for lift; those are the ones that we generally trim.those are the ones if a bird jumps off it’s cage, are going to take it to a higher height.the inner 8-10 feathers, those are the secondary feathers, those are the ones that are usedfor glide. those are the ones that your bird will use if he or she jumps off the top ofthe cage to have a nice soft landing. once again, it’s very important if you take yourbird somewhere and have the wings trimmed, and you see them start to trim the inner feathersyou should politely tell them to stop and
take your bird elsewhere.