Proper wing clip for Senegal

[Pajarita]

I've only clipped one bird in my entire life (a VERY aggressive male Senegal who flew out to attack me several times every day), I clipped just four primaries and regretted it immediately.

Personally, I think the vet goofed on this one. A respiratory infection is not the same as asthma. Asthma doesn't go away after a couple of weeks. And if the bird had underdeveloped lungs before, all the clip will do is atrophy them even worse. I would have kept the bird in a hospital cage for three days or so to give the antibiotic time to start acting and make him fly even more after a week had gone by.

[JimH]

That's what we did first. This had gone on for a while before the vet decided to clip. Things seemed to be getting better but then after one of Bishop's evening flying marathons he landed, panted heavily, woobled all over, and nearly fainted. I thought my bird was having a heart attack. Took him to the on-call vet at the office, who was a recent grad. She had no idea what happened but said he was fine on exam. The next day he attempted another fly but cut it short and landed on the floor, dizzy and panting again. Went to my regular vet and after an exam and tests he said the infection had returned. We tried the process again with more or less the same outcome.

Bishop only flies for two reasons: to come to me when called and for his crazy evening routine. Attempts to discourage or disrupt the evening fly didn't work, so based on my info about Bishop, we tried the clip. He tried his evening fly once and saw it was a no-go. He hasn't tried since, but instead spontaneously tries to fly over to me at some point in the evening without being called, or if he's with me already, he'll suddenly try to fly to his cage--an apparent shorter replacement for his old routine. Since I posted my original message he has actually stopped trying to fly at all, which is what I thought/hoped he would do based on other things I've observed in him. Hopefully he'll get the rest he needs to heal and will be ready to fly when his feathers grow back. Given his apparent willingness to just quit trying, it will be interesting to see if he figures out on his own when he can fly again.

[marie83]

Have you tried getting a second opinion if this infection is ongoing and keeps coming back? I appreciate that one avian vet is hard to come by in some areas but I do think it's worth it having seen a rubbish avian vet myself and then finding a much better one, some of them really don't know what they are talking about. A vet who suggested clipping in this circumstance and at this stage would be one that made me think s/he didn't know enough tbh.