My birds free flight, answers to questions please

[armandndeb]

Today I let my 4 keets have their first free flight, I have a fairly large guest room, I covered every thing for their protection with sheets, made it safe for them, the walls are white, well I let them out and they hit the walls, the male hurt his wing feathers, bled some, put on some stuff to stop bleeding, he didn,t bled bad, it had stopped on its own, but took percautions. The other male breathing alittle heavy, is this because he,s scared?The 2 females okay, It was a scary adventure for me, I don,t want them to hurt them self, there wings are not clipped, 2 are back in their cage, the other two on the top of the window, will they retreat back to their cage in time on their own, and how will this work out if I make it a daily adventure for them, will it be okay and safer as time goes on, any advice for this new adventure for all of us will help alot.
Thank you in advance
bo, sunny,blue and sky

[drab911]

Hello, I know exactly how you feel.. I went through the same adventure when I first had my budgies... I have 2 routes you could take... at first I thought i wanted my birds to be frree flight,,, you might want to clip their wings... just to get them a little more tame and then let them grow out afterwards so they trust you first.,..
or trust me the first time they seem to bump into the walls... but the next time I let them out they seemed to learned their lesson.. one thing you should do is make a perch or put a rope perch somewhere in the room so that they have somewhere to land.. the problem is they are flying around and do not know what to land on so they exhaust themselves and that is why they are breathing hard... that and they are scared
so I would make an outside play gym thing and keep letting them out and they will surely learn soon...
Or you could clip their wings and have them out all the time running around which is also quite fun
you have to decide which route to take but whatever you do good luck!

[charmedagain]

I agree with everything Drab911 mentioned.

Wing clipping does not hurt the birds in anway aslong as they are done correctly, You can either get a breeder or and avian vet to do it.

Wing clipping makes taming and catching alot easier as the birds will depend on you to help them get to where they want to be.
They can still fly but can not get the height they would fully feathered.

First couple of times after clipping they will land rather hard but usually with no damage to themselves.
The feathers that are clipped will fail out and regrow when they go through a molt so do not worry about this.

If the birds are not used to being out of the cage and flying about this will exhaust them as they are not used to it.
This is why i always say to people if they are going to get birds then they should be allowed out of cage time.

My birds are out of the cage all the time when i am home and they go back in on a night.

My birds are into a routine so everything is done at the same time everyday.
They soon learn the routine and will make it known if you late hehehehe.

They will not usually go back into the cage unless they are trained to do so...

Mike