Any other plucked/plucking birds?

[Featheredsamurai]

Just curious about any other plucked/plucking birds on the forum.

When I brought Rosie home she would pluck, underneath her wings on her back, her under wing coverts, her legs, and the feathers on her elbow. It was very sad, I would see her trying to jerk a feather out and I couldn't seem to do anything to stop it. I believe Rosie has stopped plucking, but only time will tell if she truly has or not. Over the last few months I would randomly find a plucked blood feather(she only blood blood feathers) but haven't in the last month and a half. She is not nearly as bald as she used to be, I also feel lucky it is under her wings so she doesn't get cold.

Diet played a important role, once her body was healthy the plucking slowed down dramatically. The second big break through came when she was mentally healthy.

here's a photo of half of Rosie's bald area, I took these yesterday after I misted her.

 

[mrgoogls]

wow. im happy she is doing better! i dont have that problem with cooper so far. hopefully i never will and hopefully most people on here wont eaither. i agree and big cause for pluking can be diet. another is mental stimulation/ boredom. they willl literally just start hurting themselves out of boredom. cooper isnt a huger user with his toys but i guess he at least isnt bored. again. im happy she s doing a bit better!

 

[Featheredsamurai]

wow. im happy she is doing better! i dont have that problem with cooper so far. hopefully i never will and hopefully most people on here wont eaither. i agree and big cause for pluking can be diet. another is mental stimulation/ boredom. they willl literally just start hurting themselves out of boredom. cooper isnt a huger user with his toys but i guess he at least isnt bored. again. im happy she s doing a bit better!

Thank you, and I'm glad to hear you never experienced that problem. It's very sad, but I'm glad it's over with.

For birds who aren't as interested in toys foraging toys are a good alternative. I'll give Rosie a wheel of fortune toy and she can have it cleaned out in less than an hour, since she's not big on toys it's great folr keeping her occupied. I want to get her more foraging toys from that brand but at the moment I'm not working so I can't go spend a bunch of money on spoiling her XD

 

[mrgoogls]

i do give him a lot of foraging opurtunities. not so many toys made for it, but a lot of foraging. i make most of the foraging things. like little balls of paper with a seed or a few pelets tied all over the cage. rolling up some dried fruit(his favorite treat of all time lol. prefers this stuff over seeds. i make it myself too so its totally healthy lol) in paper and tie the paper to the perchs. i have a few foraging toys but one i think he just gives up on because its to hard. one he uses bt i think its for a bigger bird so instead of turning it to get the food out his beak just fits through lol. and the other which is his most used toy is the "Fantastic Foraging Block" by parrot enrichment.com. AMAZING toy. chech it out if your bird likes foraging. it also gets even birds like cooper who dont chew much destorying wood. its like a totally different bird with this toy. thanks.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

Wow, I just looked up that "fantastic foraging block" and it looks like a lot of fun. I'll have to buy one for Rosie at some point. She isn't a big chewer at all so maybe that will tempt her.

 

[mrgoogls]

it really did help cooper. i got him the extra small and for the first two days he was afraid(like with all his new toys lol) but when i got home from school the third day the entire thing was in splinters on the floor. he destroyed the entire thing in one afternoon!!!! the next day i ordered 3 more and he has slowed down with them a bit more, but still likes them. let me know how they work for you!

 

[ParkersMom]

Keiko my Macaw was a plucker...hopefully former...I have had her for 3 weeks tomorrow and haven't noticed any plucking yet...she is currently going through a molt so we will see...the people I got her from had recently changed jobs and so did her schedule apparently that stressed her out... it;s mainly her legs but the vet says her feathers seem to be coming in just fine...

 

[94lt1]

My scarlet is a plucker..he goes through phases...where he's fine...and then he'll pluck. .the vets checked him out..and its not a health issue..

He was an abandoned bird...3 different owners. He's bonded to us now..but he's just waiting on the other shoe to drop.. and us get rid of him...thats what we think..

But the jokes on him..he's stuck with us..

 

[MonicaMc]

I've never had to deal with pluckers before...

But I have dealt with self mutilators, something a bit worse than plucking. Both birds came to me that way. One a cherry headed conure, another a cockatiel. Both have since passed on due to health related issues.

 

[gemini84]

im not too sure... bruno my new 18month old seemed/seems (i havent noticed him doing it) to chew on the shafts of some of his flight feathers, the vet explained to me that it was a stress issue that caused the sheath to over grow and not break off (was from before me). i also noticed a bald patch under princes wing the other day when he was in the shower splashong around. both the older ones were molting pretty heavily when i got them. i'm condtantly stressing about my birds being pluckers.
today i had feathers every where, but none looked damaged and none were blood feathers. is this just molting? it has been quite warm and humid here again and all my birdies have been enjoying long cold showers and misting.
i have not noticed either pulling on their feathers or over preening certain areas. am i just being super paranoid? my vet has informed me that they are healthy and they are on a good diet of fresh fruit/ veg 2 x daily and pellets aswell as occasional eggs and nuts.

 

[faeryphoebe1]

wow. im happy she is doing better! i dont have that problem with cooper so far. hopefully i never will and hopefully most people on here wont eaither. i agree and big cause for pluking can be diet. another is mental stimulation/ boredom. they willl literally just start hurting themselves out of boredom. cooper isnt a huger user with his toys but i guess he at least isnt bored. again. im happy she s doing a bit better!

Off topic, but Cooper is adorable!

 

[LSMITTZ]

hey everyone, I'm a first time parrot owner of a wonderful year old alexandrine who's been having problems with his tail growing. we took him to the vet a bunch of times, changed up his diet, got bloodwork done, & yesterday had to take him to the emergency clinic after I took him out of the shower & saw blood coming from his tail. that's when the vet told me he was shredding his flight & tail feathers & self mutilating since he was picking so hard it was making him bleed. when he told me that I couldn't help but cry, all I could think was that's my baby & he's hurting himself. on Friday he's going to get fitted for a collar. I just really need some support since I'm not 100% on how to deal with this.

 

[khaiqha]

I have an alexandrine that ruins his tail too. He bends the feathers into impossible angles, barbs the feathers, and has bitten the tip off of two tail feathers.

He does this when he's bored, mostly when I'm working on the computer for too long. Now I have to lock him in his cage with a bunch of toys to keep him occupied while I work. It's gone from a multiple times a day routine of him mucking with with his tail to about once every three days, and when he does it isn't so bad now. A bath usually fixes his tail.

This is the 5th bird I've had in my lifetime, and the first bird I've had that has ever self mutilated like this. It really gets me too, as this is the bird I've spent the most time with, have had the most knowledge going in, and he's the one that does this.

Mine did this a handful of times growing up (he's one now) but started heavy about a month ago. I'm hoping it's just a hormonal thing and that he will eventually stop as he gets older. Not that I would ever part with him, but I'm not looking forward towards another 40 years of constantly worrying about his tail.

 

[brianlinkles]

I too have a plucker/barberer (spelling??) My Greenwing macaw Moses will be a year in May and he no longer has a tail. In fact he has a couple of places on his chest where he has messed a bit with his feathers. I have a very good avian vet that I trust a great deal. I brought Moses in and the doctor observed his behavior and said that he is "overly bonded" with me. He says he sees this with baby birds (mainly cockatoos) but it is not that common. He says that Moses is an anxious bird and the fact that he is so overly bonded it has made him very needy for lack of a better word. In fact he has been very difficult to train because when I get too close he usually just jumps on me. We have incorporated several steps at this point. I know I will hear from some of you however the decision to medicate him made sense to me and will be tried for several months. The thought behind this is that when a bird is a plucker at a young age it is very difficult to stop. We are hoping that this along with changes in his routine will help to ingrain some sort of habit of leaving his feathers alone. My breeder has a wonderful large aviary, he has offered to allow Moses to be dropped off there several times a week. This will give him a chance to not just focus on me. I am very grateful to my breeder for this, the vet thinks this will be a wonderful opportunity for Moses to learn a bit on how to be a bird from several of my breeders birds. We did it on Saturday along with my breeder working with him throughout the day. I am just hoping for some more warm weather so we can continue this. We had blood tests etc. done on him to check for any illness but thankfully he came up healthy.
I so can relate to everyone posting here, I have been so upset over this I cannot begin to tell you. So far Moses has changed his behavior, he is now able to play on the playstand for a bit without constantly wanting to be on me, he has also allowed 5 new tail feathers to start to come in. They are still very small and I am literally obsessing over them which I am sure isn't helping the matter any. I am keeping my fingers crossed that he will allow them to grow in however I have noticed that there is a V cut out of one of the smaller feathers in his tail, I don't think that was there before so I will keep an eye on it. The whole thing is maddening, I give him loads of toys, great food lots of attention I am jsut so sad! I always worried that my grey would do this however thank goodness she is still a beautifully feathered girl!

 

[goalerjones]

Here is a link that seems to make foraging toys easier to make for us beginners...

Parrot Enrichment

 

[WannaBeAParrot]

Pritti is naked over his legs and th underside of his body. He hasn't been a plucker in over 15 years. The plucking happened over a specific period of about two years when there was a big change in our work schedules and we went from his having company home just about every day to him being home alone three or four days a week. It was very sad. But once we moved again to our permanent home two years later, the plucking stopped. However, the feathers won't regrow there any more. We had tried the collar twice, and when it came off, he plucked the same area. He's fully feathered at wings, neck, head, tail.

It's been so lo g that I forgot he ever was fully feathered. He doesn't seem to suffer any deficits because of it.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

@wannabeaparrot

Aww poor Petri, I'm glad he isn't affected by it.

 

[LSMITTZ]

my sweet boy with his new collar on.
he's still pretty unnerved about it, as am I.