How To Deal With Blood Feather Breakage What are blood feathers?
Blood feathers are newly growing feathers. They are most obvious on the forehead and wing regions. When feathers are emerging, they have a thin blood vessel to nourish the feather – hence the name “blood feathers”. When the feather matures, the blood vessel is withdrawn. This is why fully matured feathers may be cut or plucked out without the bird bleeding. How do I detect blood feathers? Blood feathers will have a keratin sheath around. The shealth serves dual purposes: 1) it help the newly growing feather (also known as pin feathers) break through the skin and 2) it protects the feather from damange until it has matured. This shealth will make the feather look like a tube or the ends of a shoe lace. They are waxy in appearance and tight. The bottom portion of the feather (near the base) is called a quill. It is darker in color, caused by the blood supply to the new feather. How do blood feathers break? The most common place for blood feather breakage is on the wing. This happen frequ
