Plucking or Molting? (Pic)

[aufde]

I've been seeing little feathers floating about Yoshi's cage and wasn't too worried, I read up on molting and thought I would know when I saw it. Now I just found a tail feather in the cage and there's a little blood in it, so I don't know if the feather was dead already or if he plucked it out.

 

[MacawGuy]

the smaller feathers could be hes getting new feathers in.. and the tail feather could of broke. he could of fell n the cage n broke it, i have a macaw n find feathers around his cage but he still has great feathering

 

[Echo]

I agree. It doesn't mean he is plucking. Looks to me like the tail feather broke.

 

[aufde]

ok, thank you. I was really worried because I know it's hard to deal with a plucking bird (maybe just as hard to deal with a molting bird )

He is still getting used to his cage, trying to see where he can jump from and to. He has fallen a couple times.

So when he does start molting, is there no blood at all left in the feather?

 

[patch]

As far as I know (which isn't much), typically there is no blood in the feather when molting happens. I've looked at Pepper's molting feathers and there is never any blood.

 

[aufde]

I noticed he has a tail feather that is almost completely white down the middle. If it's still a healthy feather with blood in it, shouldn't it be dark? How many little feather's usually fall out when they molt and when they're not molting? He's been losing 2-3 little feathers each day.

I guess I'll find out if he's molting eventually, but it'd be nice to know.

 

[MollyGreenCheeks]

That little white down feather (centered, just above the tail) is where the oil glad provides the preening oil. When a bird preens it will pick up some oil from the white down feather and then proceed to preening. It supplies the oil for weather proofing and spreading the Vit D to be turned to D3 once the feathers are exposed to UVB light. The new BirdTalk discusses this in more detail.

If he's beginning to loose a few small feathers on a regular basis, history tells me he will be molting soon.

 

[aufde]

That's not what I'm talking about (though I was wondering about it). The vein down the middle of one of his tail feathers is white, rather than the black of the one that broke/fell out. Can you tell if a feather is about to molt? Or does it look exactly the same until it falls out?

You do bring up another question though, I keep Yoshi in a room with only one window. Do conures need a lot of sun light to stay healthy? (The sunlight does come in, but is a lot less than bigger rooms with more windows) Or will the weather proofing just not be as good, which doesn't matter as much because he's indoors?

I really need to subscribe to BirdTalk

 

[Echo]

A feather will only have blood in its shaft when it is growing. Once the feather is completely grown, the shaft will look "white" (or clear) as opposed to "black"(when it is filled with blood). Is that what you were wondering about?

So if the feather that you found was growing and he broke it while falling for example, there would be some blood or dried blood in the shaft. A molted feather is done growing and the shaft is clear.