No problem, I'm just glad this had a happy ending and she's doing so well. And you're committed to keeping her healthy and happy and doing everything you need to do to keep this from happening again...
I forgot to answer one of your questions in a PM, about how long they usually have to be on the hormone-therapy to keep them from producing more Follicles/Eggs...That's a tough question to answer, because each bird is different, and sometimes there is no rhyme or reason as to why a bird suddenly starts or stops producing eggs...Your Sunny is a great example of this, as you said she hadn't laid an egg in her first 7 years of life, and you never had the "Happy Hut" cause any hormonal-behavior before. Then suddenly BAM!!!, a huge egg that gets stuck in her Oviduct...Although the field of Avian Behavioral Medicine has advanced leaps and bounds in the last decade and we are starting to better understand why captive parrots display Feather-Destructive Behaviors, Self-Mutilation, chronic hormonal-behaviors, chronic Follicle and Egg production, etc., there is still not an "overall understanding" or an "overall remedy" that will help ALL birds. It's a case-by-case basis, and you kind of have to take your cues from each individual bird and go from there...
**What I can tell you is that some females birds NEVER lay an egg or really display any hormonal-behaviors at all, regardless of external-stimuli being all over the place...BUT, what I can tell you is true in probably 100% of the female birds I've seen is that once they do display hormonal-behavior or lay their first egg, it's then that they typically never stop again without medical and behavioral/environmental intervention...So while your Sunny was fine with her "Happy Hut" and it didn't cause any issues for the first 7-years of her life, now that she has started producing Follicles and Eggs and has started displaying hormonal-behavior, it's now extremely important that the "Hut" is permanently gone, along with all other external-stimuli that induce hormonal-behavior...So all of the steps that you're taking now to better her diet, her environment, and to remove any and all external stimuli that could trigger her reproductive system to remain active are all very necessary.
I kind of have a theory about female birds and their hormones/egg production just based on what I've seen with so many different female birds/parrots in the Rescue. Observing them all and not knowing any of them personally or knowing anything about their attitudes, tendencies, behaviors, etc. makes me very non-biased and I have no preconceived notions about them...And what I think is that a female bird's reproductive system can lay dormant for a very long time, and then SOMETHING triggers it to become active. And then once a female bird's reproductive system becomes active, it's going to stay active (or "switched-on") until it's "switched-off"...And while it's "switched-on", all of the external stimuli, food, and behaviors that we commonly say "cause hormonal behavior" will all continue to do so, even if they never did before their reproductive system was "switched-on"...And if you're lucky enough to some day in the future get their reproductive system to "switch-off", then it will stay off again until whatever it is that "switched it on" happens again...And while it's "switched-off" all of those common, external stimuli that we say influence hormonal behavior, such as nests, huts, tents (small, dark places), warm, mushy foods, being off of a "Natural Light Schedule", petting them under the wings and on their bellies/back, etc. will NOT cause any type of hormonal behavior, not until their reproductive system is again "switched back on", if that ever happens again...Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't...And of course the key to this whole thing is figuring out what the hell it is that causes their reproductive systems to be "switched on and off"...I guess the question really is "Where is the reproductive system's switch?", and the answer to that is going to be unique to each individual bird. That's what we need figure out...
And this theory is completely supported by both the sex-hormone levels and the patterns in which they rise and fall when tested repetitively, and most-of-all supported by their regular, plain-film X-Rays...I forgot to ask you about Sunny's X-Rays and whether or not they indicated that her reproductive system is overactive right now or not...If a female bird's reproductive system is extremely active, their bones actually look like they are literally "glowing" on a regular X-Ray. You can tell right away if the bird is "switched-on" or not by looking at their X-Ray.
Anyway, that's just my theory. As far as answering your question about the Deslorelin/Suprelorelin Implants, you're correct that it usually takes about a month after they are implanted for you to actually see a difference in their behaviors because they it's at that point that they completely "switch-off" her reproductive system, and then probably another month after that for ALL of the sex-hormones that were already released into her body to dissipate so she has none at all in her system. But you should notice a difference in her behavior after about a month of having the implants in. For example, after a month of having the implants in she may stop trying to get under your shirt...For a lot of hormonal female birds, after the first month any aggression/biting they have been showing stops, any masturbating stops, any plucking around their vents and on their abdomen stops, etc.
****As far as whether or not she'll need to be on the hormone therapy for the rest of her life or not is just dependent on her. What is very important is that her living environment is changed, her diet is changed, the way she's interacted with/handled/petted changes, etc. and that she lives that way, without any external, dietary, or behavioral stimuli for quite a while BEFORE you ever think about stopping the implants. That way if and when you do decide to stop the implants, there will be nothing in her life or environment that will cause her reproductive system to be "switched-on" again. I have not been using the Deslorelin/Suprelorelin implants long enough that I've ever taken a bird off of them before, so I can't really give you any type of percentages of how many birds start being hormonal again after they come-off the implants. They just haven't been around/been used in birds for that long a period of time to be able to know that yet. With the Depot Provera and the Lupron injections, they never really worked that well to begin with, so I would take any of the published data about their outcomes with a grain of salt. They just do not work well, at least not in birds.
