A beak question.

[Alison]

A friend of mine has several birds and she has, within the last year, been having a problem with overgrown top mandibles. It started with a Mustache beak, then a Derbyan, then the Eclectus, then two other Mustaches. I mean these beaks are really overgrowing bad and fast. I go and drummel them every other month, some every month. There is nothing showing up in the bloodwork and there are no other signs of problems. Weights are good, feathers are perfect (except one bird, an Eclectus). I have read everything on diseases I can find and I have yet to find anything that has only overgrown beaks as a symptom. At one point, I thought the Mustache was going to get over it, because when I went to drummel it, the whole top beak fell off in one chunk like an injured fingernail that falls off when the new nail grows up under it. There was another beak that looked normal under it. But about 2 months later, that beak too was overgrown severely. Anyone ever experience this before or have any ideas as to what it may be?

 

[Peta]

Oh that is awful, I hope someone can shed some light on this. Can't say I've ever heard of any problem that had overgrown beaks alone. Let us know what happens, please.

 

[MKay]

Re: A beak question... Michael?

I don't know about the Derbyan, but with Moustache parakeets, don't the females usually experience abnormally fast beak growth during breeding season? Michael knows the answer to this--I just can't remember which species he has that has this characteristic?!

 

[Michael]

Alison,
I have a Moustache male that has a beak that overgrows. He has also been tested and nothing indicating anything out of order, which as you mentioned, can be a result of an underlying health problem.
He is not fond of chewing wood and only does so when he is in his breeding mode and chews his nest box. But even this does nothing to naturally trim his beak.
I only trim his beak maybe once a year as it is not fast growing, but it does grow.
He is one of four Moustaches and his is the only beak that is out of the ordinary.
Have yet to find an explainable reason.

Michael

 

[Michael]

Before I saw Mary Kay's posting, I sent my original response.

When the Jardines go into breeding mode, the females can often times have their lower beaks grow quickly, and fiercely.
This is due to the fact that in the wild, they dig very deep nests and use their beaks to do this thus trimming the beak as they go. Some birds, and Jardines are one of them, will make natural nests about 20 feet deep.
I have two hens that both do this and I have to remove them from their eggs right before they are scheduled to hatch and trim their lower mandibles. If not, they would not be able to feed their chicks. Not to mention it causes them to have scissor beak from the excessive growth.

Michael

Maybe it's not been studied, but this could also be what's happening with the Psittacula species that you mentioned.

 

[Alison]

Have yet to find an explainable reason.

That is so strange, I would think that if this is a fairly common thing, that there would be some kind of explanation for it. Nothing showed up in the test she had done either. The old lady I do home grooming for has that Parrotlet that I mentioned in another post, who also has the overgrown top mandible. I also trim the beak on a couple Budgies people bring into the trimming clinic I help run. I wonder if there is a possibility that someone trimmed these birds beaks, when it wasn't medically necessary, in order to blunt the bites and that is why they grow so fast now. I know of several people who want me to do just that, but I won't. I only trim a beak when it is overgrown and necessary, not because an owner doesn't want a sharp beak biting them. I mean they used to split beaks for that reason, so it's not totally out of the realm of possibility. What do you think?