If it were me I would go a lot slower than you are planning. After the pins are removed, the wing will still be healing for quite some time. If it were me I would be feeding the bird up with at very high quality diet to help bone healing and depending what x-rays look like I wouldn’t even consider dropping his weight until sometime after New Years. There is a good chance that I wouldn’t even hunt the bird the rest of the season. A re-fracture of the wing at this point could have devastating affects.
Just going by what my avian vet said....He told me it takes about a week to two weeks to grow back the bone lacking area from the pins.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
I just think you would be putting the bird in a bad situation. Let’s put it this way. If you broke your leg and it required external fixation to stabilize it, do you think it would be a good idea to go out and run a 5k race a week after everything was removed from your leg? To me, it is just not worth the risk.
Yea, but our bones are completely different than a birds...they are hollow to begin with, so it has nowhere near as much mass to recover. As for running a 5k....I don't think two pin holes would be the deciding factor in another break. Greg Moore(falconer,breeder and vet) said that the bones heal very quickly in birds...unlike mammals. 10 to 12 days ought to do fine after the pins are removed....plus, I am not planning on hitting the fields hard right away like a 5k run either....First off, I need to make sure he won't fly in constant circles first.....
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
Just a quick update on Ed. He got the pins taken out yesterday and the vet said it healed well, but...He has no built up a bit of cartilage around the joint, so he will be going to the vets regularly for the next few weeks to do some physical stretching of the wing. I am not comfortable doing it myself yet as you can easily re-break the wing doing this....I'll leave it up to the vet....Also, he has been moulting so fast, he only has about two primaries left in each wing....the rest are pin feathers in the blood, so flying is out for the next few weeks at least....He is in the mews at the moment and I will have to keep an eye on him to make sure he can get around. Last night, he could not fly to the perch on the wall, so he stayed on the 1ft tall stump perch.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."