Alfies tail feathers

[daveyj]

Alfie has been molting for about a month or so now and his new red tail feathers are just coming through he still has some old ones to. How long does it usually take to grow the full set and should he cast his flight feathers in order i.e. from the body to the outer wing this is his first molt as he is just turned 1 year old. Alfie has his first 4 flights clipped from the outer wing & i have noticed that a new one has grown where one of his clipped flights was so have i missed the others or do they cast flight feathers in any order they want to grow in ? When i had Racing Pigeons they always cast the flight feathers in order from the body to the outer wing<br><br>Post edited by: daveyj, at: 2009/07/14 23:11

[Dave007]

All flight feathers and tail feathers don't molt out the way all of the other feathers do. There is no set time during the year that it'll happen and most of the time those feathers won't fall out at the same time--examples, flight and tail feathers. They fall out when they're ready to fall out. They die whenever they die. usually, a new feather is growing in just behind it. That way of losing flight and tail feathers will continue for the bird's whole life. If one flight or tail feather falls out it will be replaced by another but that doesn't mean that the flight or tail feathers next to it are ready to fall out. It's a very uneven process and the people who have the most trouble with that process are those that own birds who've been clipped.

I really know nothing about the molting of racing pigeons. What I'm say only applies to parrots so you need to be patient because old dead feather will fall out and eventually get replaced. There's times when 2 or 3 feathers will fall out and other times only one feather will fall out but most taiil anf flight feathers rarely fall out at the same time. Those feathers don't come under the classification of the regular *yearly molt*. Those feathers will fall out all year long.

[daveyj]

Thanks very much Dave Top infomation from you once again;)

[danmcq]

Dave is always "Spot On".

 

Dayo is 2 years 3 months old and just recently lost his last "baby" tail feather.

 

He has only molted out about 5 of his primary feathers (flights).

 

Heck, he still even has some secondary feathers that are originals and coming out here and there.

 

We have a large freezer bag that we keep every feather his has molted, except the smallest and downy's.

 

We're going to make a large "Dream Catcher" out of them. :-)