About the "Flight Operation"
I have no idea where that old book is now. It was one of my fathers and I am sure it is somewhere in the thousands of books I have. I can't bring myself to throw away a paperback novel let alone a book about poultry.
But I do remeber the procedure. My advice is to get a couple of chicken wings (complete, all three sections) from the market or the wife or somewhere. Learn the anatomy and practice on these.
You make an inscision just through the skin on the front edge of the last joint after removing enough feathers to see what you are doing. Between the very last wing section, the one with no meat and the middle section, the one with two bones in it. You will see a tendon there on the front edge of the wing bones. You snip that and remove 1/8" of it. If you just cut it there is a possibility that it will heal back together , or so they said. I would be careful about nicking bones with the scapel when I made any cuts. Turn the birds you operate on loose in a clean environemt and that is it.
The result is that the bird is unable to extend it's wing enough to hold the primary feathers in place for flight. Since we didn't do anything with the tendon on the back of the wing the bird has no trouble holding it's wing up against it's side when it is not in flight. Looks normal.
I did Canada Geese and Call Ducks this way very sucessfully. Once the game warden stoped by to examine my liscence for keeping migratory waterfowl. I explained to him that those Canadas were wild an I was not restraing them from leaving. He rushed the birds to see them flare their wings so he could see if they had been pinioned by amputation or feather clipping, whatever. He never caught on to what I had done. The birds were capable of a little bit of gliding with a good running start but they could never really get airborne again.
