Grooming?

[KiwiDaConure97]

Hey just a quick post, I just saw my GCC pull out one of his flight feathers ;(. I rarely see him pull out his feathers, he normally just preens but sometimes pulls a feather out. I just wanted to know, is pulling out feathers or useless feathers part of grooming activities?

 

[Mm6393]

Are you sure he purposely pulled it out? Sometimes my conure will preen herself and while she’s doing it, a feather happens to fall out. Is he doing it often? Like have you noticed patches where feathers have gone missing?

 

[KiwiDaConure97]

Are you sure he purposely pulled it out? Sometimes my conure will preen herself and while she’s doing it, a feather happens to fall out. Is he doing it often? Like have you noticed patches where feathers have gone missing?

Nope, he has 0 skin showing. He'll only do this once or twice a day, and rarely maybe 3-5 times. He has no patches, whenever he pulls out a feather (or one falls out) there's a gray spot there, from the fluffy feathers. Usually he just covers those up and goes along with his day. These feathers might be accidentally falling out. I checked the flight feather and it didn't seem very strong, at least to me. Maybe it just was accidentally pulled out because it was weak.

 

[MonicaMc]

When birds are molting, feathers become loose. If a bird comes across a loose feather, they'll remove it. Nothing to worry about!


However, if a bird is plucking the feathers out, you'll *usually* know it, because it hurts! (not all can be obvious about plucking though)