Name: Pat

Message: Hi Paula
Your website is extremely informative and helpful yet also confusing.  It is the most detailed explanation about dyes I have ever read.  

Just FYI, I am not a fabric dyer. I am a biologist.  

I am dyeing live birds (I have USFWS & USGS permits for this) and have tried other dyes that wash off easily (e.g. malachite green, rhodamine B--which I think  is now considered toxic too).  I need   the dyes I use  to last about a month.

I know that dyes like picric acid form a bond with the free amino acids on the feathers and that they work well.  I thus believe that I want an acid dye like picric acid,  (e.g. Acid Red 4, Acid Yellow 23), but in reading your very good descriptions of the various dyes, I realized that the best results of course come from when you boil the dye with the  wool.  Of course we will be applying the dyes on the feathers of a live bird and so temperature has to be ambient.

Having said that, which of the dyes you describe do you think would last the best? Unfortunately the birds are seabirds who plunge-dive about 1-2 feet into the ocean to feed, and so the feathers will get wet.  Thus, we do not want a dye that will wash out in salt water. 

We are planning to do the following: 1,use a wetting agent to remove excess oil in the small area where we will put the dye; 2, use an alcohol-based carrier of the dye along with acid to set it; and 3, hold the bird until the dye has dried (have no idea how long that would be)

I have read some MSDS-es of the dyes, and although written by lawyers to all sound horrible, I know that some are safe--ie. those used in cosmetics and food (and their MSDS-es do not sound good at all).

Which of your dyes would you suggest?  A chemist at a fly-tying company suggested acid red 4 & acid blue 249 for colorfastness, but I am also looking for two more colors that we could see from afar.  In a prior study, I used picric acid, which faded so much, we could not see it on the birds. Thus I am thinking of a dye in that same family and in  bright green or a dark yellow or a black.  I have heard OK feedback from Lissamine green (acid green 50) , and acid yellow 23 (tartrazine), and was wondering also about Amido Black 10 B (Acid Black 1) or Hematoxylin (Natural Black 1).

Do you have any other suggestions for dyes?  Or classes of dyes (from your website classifications)?   Or opinions about the above dyes (i.e. toxic, short-0lasting etc.)?  Or also suggestions for the dyeing process?

If you don't know the answers to these questions, any leads you may give me would be most helpful.  I know that dyeing live animals is not your field, but you are indeed an expert on dyes, and I figured that you would be the best person to answer all of this.

This is a very interesting and difficult question, since you can't use heat to set the dyes at all. As a rule all acid dyes attach much better at high temperatures. I don't have any answers for you, but here are some suggestions.

It would be a good idea for you to get some white feathers from a crafts store and experiment on them before using a dye on your wild birds. It's impossible to predict how well the various dyes will work without a heat fixing step.  A fly-tying chemist should be a better source than I am, since they specialize in dyeing feathers that will be immersed in water. Unfortunately, their experiences, like mine with textiles, allow the use of heat that is not possible for you to use on a live bird. Trial and error is essential, including soaking your test feathers in salt water to see if they run.

There are some fabric paints and markers that do not require heat setting. Unlike dyes, they are held in place by an acrylic binder, instead of by hydrogen bonding between the dye and the protein of the feather. It would be a good idea to try these, along with your dyes. A fabric marker that does not have to be heat-set would be very convenient to use. I know that the Marvy Uchida fabric markers do not require heat setting, and they survive repeated launderings. The Identipen brand of fabric markers would be worth a try, too. Look at the fabric marker offerings at the Dharma Trading Company web site.

The dyes that are used for tie-dyeing cotton, Procion MX dyes, will also react well with silk and wool at a pH of 9 or so, at room temperature. The pH must be above 8 for the reaction to occur reliably without heat. These are fiber reactive dyes, though they can also be used as acid dyes if an acid is substituted for the base they are normally used with. I would recommend that you add these to your testing. If you don't already have a source for these dyes, there is a well-known hand-dyer's supply company, Maiwa Handprints, located in Vancouver. Dylon Cold Water dyes are also, most of them, Procion MX dyes, and they tend to be fairly easy to come by in Canada. There are other lines of dye sold by Dylon; don't confuse Dylon Cold Dye with Dylon Multi Purpose Dye, Dylon Permanent Dye, or Dylon Hand Dye.

Tartrazine, the yellow food dye, is not going to be at all light-resistant. I expect it will fade quickly. I don't have personal experience with the other dyes you mention. Hematoxylin is far less toxic than picric acid; it's certainly safer to work with. Picric acid is a rather frightening chemical.

You've probably already studied this document: Guidelines to the Use of Wild Birds in Research (Edited by Abbot S. Gaunt & Lewis W. Oring)
and the reference they mention,
Belant, J.L., and T.W. Seamans. 1993. Evaluation of dyes and techniques to color-mark incubating herring gulls. J. Field Ornithol. 64:440-451. 
What do they say about dyes and dye fixatives?

Do you put some sort of oil onto the dyed region after you have completed marking the birds? I'm wondering if the de-oiled section of feathers would tend to absorb more water than usual, and whether some sort of waterproofing oil or silicone treatment would help the dye marking to last longer.

I hope that some of these notes may be helpful. I would very much like to know what ends up working best for your bird marking.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)