Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-ses!hpdml93!miken
From: miken@hpdml93.HP.COM (Mike Nickerson)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Great Horned Owl
Message-ID: <2730001@hpdml93.HP.COM>
Date: 17 Oct 89 21:53:12 GMT
References: <1812@pbhyg.PacBell.COM>
Organization: Hewlett Packard - Boise, ID
Lines: 58

/ hpdml93:rec.birds / ead@PacBell.COM (Elizabeth A. Dykstra) /  7:08 pm  Oct 16, 1989 /

>The happy ending to the story is that another Great Horned Owl residing at the
>reserve with severe feather damage will be receiving feather grafts from Hooter
>to replace wing feathers.  This is not as generous as we at the time thought;
>the reserve is interested in not sustaining the cost of an entire year of care
>for the live owl, until he can undergo a normal moult.  With the feather graft,
>the live owl can be released sooner back to the wild.  We wonder whether the
>graft will work, or if it will leave this live owl very vulnerable, and
>possibly shorten its lifespan?
>
>Does anyone know anything about such operations, and their rate of success?
>While we feel that we "did the right thing", I'm not so sure that this is not
>experimental, and more for the benefit of knowing about how grafting can work,
>and save boarding expenses, rather than to save the life of the owl.  (The
>owl's life is not threatened by the feather damage as long as it is in
>captivity.  A premature release, on the other hand, is quite dangerous.)
>
>Please comment.
>
>By the way, we were told that death by starvation is not at all unusual for
>these birds.  How very sad.
>
>
>Elizabeth Dykstra
>----------

My wife is a raptor rehabilitator and falconer.  This technique is quite common
with falconers in this area.  We often get birds with broken feathers and 
repair them with new feathers before release.  Falconers are allowed to keep
feathers from their birds for this very purpose.  It is illegal to posses 
feathers except for this purpose.

The "operation" is actually rather simple.  The bird is awake the whole time.
We usually wrap the bird in a towel to keep it calm and still.  We then cut
the tip off a new feather so that the end matches what the bird broke off.
A small piece of wood is placed in the hollow shaft of the feather and glued
in place.  We use "super-glue" (cyanoacrylate) because it is very strong
and dries very quickly.  Enough glue is used to ensure that the wood and 
feather are well bonded.  The falconer's term for this process is "imping."

The process is very effective.  After gluing the feathers, we keep the birds
a few days to ensure the glue joint is holding.  We have had several birds
that had feathers glued and were also kept through the moult.  The tips 
were still glued to the feathers even after the feather was moulted.  I would
not worry about the process.  It works very well.

My wife has also used a modified technique on a prairie falcon she found which
was starving to death.  All the feather shafts were very weak and fragile.  
We placed a thin bead of super-glue on her primary wing and tail feathers in
order to strengthen them.  Her first year, she was held together with glue!
She moulted perfectly her second year.

It's good to see people caring about the birds.

Mike Nickerson
Hewlett-Packard
Boise, ID