Eating feather toys bad?

So I have one of the da bird toys for my kitty (who is now about 6.5 months old). And he loves it to death. Literally - he loves to attack them and pounce it and sometimes I let him catch it just so he feels like he did something (and he's always so proud of himself when he gets to walk away with it).

Anyway, after 2-3 weeks of playing with the feather daily with him it gets pretty worn out. So I have to replace it. So far when I do this I've been giving him the old one - because he has so much fun with it. Tossing it around...pouncing it...and chewing on it.

The last is what concerns me - after about 3 days the feathers are gone and just the rubber and fish eye piece are left (he never tries to eat that - he stops playing with it at that point). He just chews the feathers off. They're supposed to be natural bird feathers (with maybe a little dye in them) so this can't hurt him right? I mean outdoor cats eat birds all the time and the feathers don't hurt them?

He's so happy when he gets to play with the feather toy on his own so I'd like to continue giving it to him - I just want to make sure that him chewing the feathers down to nothing isn't harmful to him.

Reeses destroys feather toys all the time and after a year I don't think she has gotten sick once from it.

Yes, I think it's okay... cats ingest feathers with birds. But since your cat is eating them so frequently, I'd try to pick toys that have natural, un-dyed feathers.

Tiny eats feathers sometimes from the feather toy he plays with; but I try to get them out of his mouth. He's prone to hairballs anyway, so I don't want any more nonfood items in his stomach. It's never bothered him, though I'm a bit leery about the shafts in the middle of the feathers; if those are hard enough, they could conceivably poke something important while they're passing through his intestine. So I take feathers away if he gets big ones; but I don't really worry about the little bits that come off.

I won't let my cats eat their feather toys.
The feathers usually have dyes on them.

Try to AVOID letting the feathers be eaten .... MANY arent REAL fleathers and OFTEN are not dyed with FOOD based dyes....

Plain brown tabby ( in our market forum) has turkey feathers with safe dyes

I use plain white feathers for my toys just for that reason.

I have toys with feather that look real (not die, they look like natural birds feathers). Singa liked the toys and started chewing up the feathers.. she was playing rough and the feathers also came off by themselves...
But she started choking on them.. or at least it sounded really bad after she ate them. She would cough and wheeze when this happened. That's why I decided to put these feather toys away.