mercy318

[mercy318]

This forum is just what I have been looking for. I am a woman, 61 years old; with green cheek conures. I have two, Hermoine and Norman. I have had them for over 14 years. They are considered family in every way. They have their own dishes when we eat at the table. They are house trained to the bath tub. It is easy to clean it up in there. I am also married for 8 months. And if anybody wonders, I didn't have to get married. We have a pomeranian 8 years old. The birds love to tease her. I have never used a forum before, except when I was in web site compition. If I do something wrong please tell me.
It is nice to meet you all.
One of my babies has a problem with over preening. He pulls out all of his feathers around his neck and head. I have tried every thing I can think of to stop him. He is a beautiful green cheek or he was before He started to do this. Do any of you know of a way to stop this.

 

[TessieB]

Nice to meet you, too!

 

[triordan]

Welcome to the forum, perhaps you could ask about the over preening in another post, you may get more responses. I don't have experience

 

[GaryBV]

Hi Mercy, welcome to the forum. I don't know what the difference is between 'over preening' and 'plucking'. Earlier this year I got a male parrotlet that was a heavy plucker. He had no feathers on his back, no tail feathers at all, or wing feathers. It just broke my heart. But now, he's fully feathered and beautiful and I'm working on getting him to fly. What I did is I used the plucking behavior to my advantage - meaning, I gave him seed covered pinecones (he liked them), the Wesco kabobs (love them), I gave him paper boxes with treats in them, and corn on the cob, leaving the corn ON the cob. I also feed him a lot of vegetables and soaked seeds and sprouted seeds - he loves them, as well as scrambled eggs. Other thing I gave him is I hung a millet spray holder from the top center (so he had to work to get at it) and filled it with organic millet, nutri-berries and avi-cakes. The common theme here is it is a bunch of stuff that he had to pick at and work at. I did also get a female parrotlet that had been a lone bird, like he was but I see that you have two conures so that kind of lonliness wouldn't be the same. I would also try soaking seed and sprouting seed - try Higgins soak & sprout, or Higgins Sunburst soak & sprout - my birds LOVE it, racing to the food dishes when I give it to them, and it's soooo simple and easy to do, even just soaking the seed mixture in water overnight is good as the seeds plump up and gain many nutrients; and in a couple days they sprout and if it goes well you can get yourself a seed sprouter - very cheap on Amazon. I know I'm being very detailed here but this is an issue I'm passionate about because self-mutilation and plucking just tears at my heart. One thing I find very interesting is that birds in the wild never pluck, only birds in captivity. A plucking bird in the wild would not survive very long. Anyways... try some or all of these things, search Amazon for the Wesco Kabob, and Higgins soak & sprout - all are easy to find if you just look. Good luck.

 

[BruceV]

Hi Mercy! Welcome to the forums!

 

[MarciaLove]

Hi welcome to the forum and love the names of your birds are you a Harry Potter fan??? Im a HUGE fan started reading them when I was 7!!! As for the plucking had anything new come into the environment or has he recently been lonely, bored, stressed?? Hope you can get him/her to stop plucking!

 

[mercy318]

He is one of my favorites. I fell in love with Hedgewig. Norman has been doing this for a couple of years. He was so pretty before he went bald. Nice meeting you to.

 

[mercy318]

Thank you all for your responces. I think I know what to do now.

 

[henpecked]

Thank you all for your responces. I think I know what to do now.

Join the forum and start a thread in the conure section !!
Glad you found us and can learn/ help, others to keep your birds happy and healthy. Lots of good info and friendly members. Welcome to the forum. BTW does your conure pluck with his feet? I've heard about that but have never seen it. Most of the "pluckers" we see start with areas they can reach with their beak. Are you sure one bird is not plucking the other? It's strange to see a bird plucking it's head and neck , in most plucked birds, that's the only place they do have feathers.

 

[Terry57]

Hi Mercy and welcome!