I wouldnt pull feathers for DNA or otherwise, but there is honestly no comparison for the pain involved in pulling a chest feather (which is not attached to bone) vs a flight feather which is. There is also a BIG difference in pulling a feather in an emergency vs one that is not an emergency and could be done in a more humane manner. Just because they dont scream or flinch when these feathers are preened doesnt mean it doesnt hurt when they are ripped out of the follicle
When I decided to pull the few feathers that I did, yes, it was not an emergency. But should I wait until it is an emergency? Should I wait until her and her friend (Opa) chew them down to the skin(if you look closely in the picture I provided in my first post, it shows the flight and tail feathers being so strandy and splitting) and possibly cause a feather cyst and cause possible future problems (feather barbering, follicle issues, more crashings, injuries, etc)?. So many negative probabilities if I had decided to leave the feathers in. I have no regrets pulling the feathers. They needed to go. It has relieved her and Opa from chewing on the feathers and from her landing bad, she hasnt landed poorly since before those feathers were pulled, she isnt preening right after a landing, she isnt crashing, no possible future negative outcome of this except the very small chance that the follicle could be damaged, but I had checked them this morning and they are closed up and Im sure in less than a week from now I should see new development. She is no longer in discomfort, she is happy, healthy, retain her flight, landing better. I see nothing negative out of any of this. The only negative thing that I did was restrain her for about 10 seconds or less (it was a very quick procedure) and cause small amount of pain to the better of her health and well being. We dont bash someone for accidently clipping a blood feather, pulling a blood feather when a more safer and humane course of action would be to pinch the blood feather and coagulate it with cayenne pepper WHICH IS A PAIN RELIEVER, or from accidently or purposely clipping nails too short, for plucking feathers for DNA. I dont see why avian avenue should bash someone's belief that feather extraction of tail or flight when many here could be accused or "unintentionally" hurting their birds by clipping nails, wings, pulling feathers for whatever reason. Just because its "new" to everyone or is of different belief, doesnt make it wrong. As I have pointed out that there are other things that cause pain and harm to our birds for whatever reasons and all of those are of common practice
. No one should judge especially when no intentional abuse/pain/harm was meant in either pulling broken blood feathers, nail clippings accidently/or purposely cut too short, pulled belly feathers or pulling a couple flight or tail feathers. All of these done was for the better health of our birds with probably NO pain reliever involved(!), no one should judge as Im sure most everyone has done one or the other of these.