Sun Conure won't use wing after minor injury

[cotilloe]

Hi,

My 4 year old sun Conure, Pedro, got into a fight with a rat last year. He suffered a small laceration on his wing where it meets his body. Took him to the vet, everything looked fine. Bandaged him up and came home. He started biting at the wound area so went back to vet, he came home with a cone to prevent the biting.

Nothing is wrong with his wing. Yet he won't use it. He just let's it drag in front of him. It has been several months now.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum and I am so sorry about your poor bird. Now, I am going to disagree with you, there is MOST DEFINITELY something wrong with the wing. Birds don't drag a wing for no reason -it's actually very uncomfortable for them to do this- so, if he is not using it months after the injury and drags it when he walks, there is damage. Wings are incredibly fragile, one little wound in the right place and there goes the wing - and it doesn't have to be a broken bone, either, soft tissue damage will do it, too. In your bird's case, if the wound was where the wing meets the body and the bird now cannot flap or even 'close' the wing, most likely, the problem is that the tendon that goes from the shoulder to the 'wrist' was torn (this is just my personal opinion, I am not a vet). It's called 'ligamentum elasticum propatagiale' and it's like an elastic that the muscles stretch out or not. When the wing is open, the ligament is 'stretched out' and, when the wing is closed, it's not. Because of this 'elasticity', when it's torn, it's like when you have a stretched out elastic band and you cut it, it will immediately 'snap back' so, even when you eight-bandage the wing, the ends remain separate and does not 'heal. So, in my personal experience and opinion, this wing will remain unusable unless they do surgery (which would be expensive and difficult). But don't blame the vet for this because, even if they had taken an XRay, they wouldn't have seen it.

I am sorry I wasn't able to help you better.