Q: Our lovebird is now a year old. When we bought him as a baby, his wing feathers were trimmed so he would not fly. Now they have grown back and he is flying all over the house. He leaves a mess everywhere. I want to get his wings trimmed, but my husband and son like the bird to fly and they say he will be happier and healthier if we don’t trim his wing feathers again. I want to know what you think.

A: This is one of those questions that set off endless debate. For the record, I love to see a bird fly, and I never trim any of my birds’ wing feathers. However this is to satisfy my desires and has nothing to do with the well-being of the birds.

Birds do not need to fly to stay in top physical condition — with the exception of such species as swifts, hummingbirds and nightjars that have very small and useless feet that deny them the ability to walk. These are not birds we keep as pets anyway.

A bird that has a rich environment to climb about and exercise in and is given the proper diet can stay physically fit. Birds don’t have any psychological need to fly when they are well cared for and feel safe. Just about every zoo in the country has ponds and pens with ducks, flamingos and cranes all walking about in them. These birds have all been pinioned — a vet will surgically remove the tip of one of the bird’s wings at the first joint (sort of like declawing a cat), and these birds will never fly again. They are quite happy and healthy. Zoos would not do it if the result would compromise the birds’ well-being.

Those same zoos often have a pair of bald eagles on display that are there because they were injured in some manner in the wild and those injuries prevented them from ever flying again. Those pairs of eagles are content in their enclosures and even build nests and have babies. Only happy birds will do that. So if these eagles that were flying in the wild and then rendered flightless can be happy and well adjusted, then a parrot that has its wing feathers trimmed can be happy as well.

Birds with trimmed feathers often have a lot more freedom because birds that can fly about the house are more likely to be restricted to their cages.

Because flighted birds, despite our best intentions, do get outdoors sometimes, I get frequent calls from fretful petkeepers whose birds are perched 100 feet up in a tree. When your pet bird slips out an open door or window and flies off, it causes so much family drama. No pet bird with properly trimmed wing feathers ever flew away from its home.

So again the decision to trim a bird’s feathers is a personal one. There is no right or wrong answer. In any case, be aware that trimmed feathers do fall out when the bird molts and the feathers regrow. So if you do have a bird that can fly and you get the feathers trimmed to render the bird flightless and do not like the result, all you need to do is wait a few months and the bird will be flying again.

Q: In a past column, you wrote that some cats digest canned food better than dry food as you felt the canned food was less processed. How do I decide what type of canned food is processed more than others?

A: Just read the list of ingredients of that particular food. If you recognize them and would eat them yourself, then those are items that you would want to feed to your pet. If you do not recognize those ingredients, then look to another brand. The only exception to this is if your pet is on a prescription diet. These diets can have some odd-sounding ingredients designed to help treat the condition that your pet is suffering from.

Q: I have lived on the South Shore for the past 40 years. Each year I notice that there are fewer and fewer monarch butterflies that migrate through my yard in fall. I have planted butterfly bushes and other flowering plants for them to feed off, but each year there are fewer anyway. Is there anything else I can do to help them increase in population?

A: Flowering plants do help, but what the monarch butterflies really need are more patches of milkweed to lay their eggs on as that is the only thing their caterpillars eat. If there is no milkweed, then no monarchs. Milkweed is a native plant and not a weed. It is not invasive and looks quite pretty. If everyone planted some in their yards or in pots on their patios, life would be a bit less hard for the monarchs. There are lots of companies such as livemonarch.com that offer milkweed seeds to people like you who want to be sure that future generations will still be able to experience the monarch butterfly. I will be sure to bring this subject up again in late winter when people are buying seeds for their spring gardens.