Wing feathers? Molting question

[Tali]

Hi, so miss Tali has 4 very bright red tail feathers coming in so I’m assuming we are in molt ... do you think this means her flight feathers might start molting next? 

They were clipped and I want her to be able to fly like my boy can 😏

[Ray P]

A molt is a slow process as they will lose their feathers in a sequence especially flights that will alternate from side to side so they don`t lose their ability to fly in the wild.

[Tali]

Gawd I hope her flight feathers start molting soon, she wants to fly so bad atm

[Ray P]

It will take time and seam like forever, but the stubs will molt out and she will fly

Just hang in there and they will fly.

Ray

[LNCAG]

Mine moults out a few feathers at a time --- never all at once -- that way he's always able to fly.  And yeah, I tend to collect the pretty tail feathers he drops.   

I was confused, you mentioned yours was clipped but you want him to fly -- did this clipping occur in a previous home?  Is this a new parrot for you?

Anyway, best of luck, it takes a while to grow out and replace clipped flight feathers.

[Tali]

Is there an order in which they molt tho? She tried to follow my male and leaped off her cage flapping her wings poor thing

[Ray P]

A molt is a as needed process to replace dead or worn- out feathers as needed. It can  be a slow process and seam like it takes forever.

There`s not much you can do to speed it up.

[LNCAG]

New feathers begin to form small under the skin, they increase in size and protrude out of the skin as new baby blood feathers/pin feathers (supplied by blood -- if broken, they can bleed out like an open catheter).  Then the blood supply cuts off as the new feather becomes fully formed inside the now much longer protruding sheath.  That's a lot of the 'dandruff' you may see -- bits of that sheathing coming off to reveal a fully formed feather.  It takes a while (months) for this to happen: when the feather is ready, it's no longer a blood blood feather; the white sheath will fall off (in bits and strips) and the newly developed functional feather is revealed.  As new feathers come in, old ones fall off (in your case, these discarded old primary feathers will be 'clipped' ones; and the new primary feathers will be long and fully formed/functional.  Expect the wings to be mixed for a while -- some full new feathers, some old clipped feathers.

I can't explain it any better, sorry.

Definitely within a year a clipped bird will be fully flighted; but since this happens in stages, you should see some new feathers come in anywhere from 4 -6 months.  May not make bird fully flighted immediately since some clipped ones will remain.  Also, understand, at the time of the clipping, some new feathers were probably already beginning to be formed.