Small bare patch?

[fiddlejen]

I've noticed my 6-month old Sun Conure has a small, but visible bare patch at the top of it's shoulder blades. Is this anything to worry about?

 

[EllenD]

At 6 months-old it could possibly be that he is starting his first molt, which is the largest molt of his life because they shed their baby-feathers and grow-in their adult plumage...However, 6 months is a bit young to start his molt, though it is still possible, but the problem is that he still shouldn't have any "bare" spots where he has no feathers, that's not how they molt...

Can you take a photo of the "bare-patch" on his shoulder and post it here so we can see what is going on? Because without seeing it we can't tell you whether or not it's a problem...I will say that often times they do pluck the top of their shoulders, so that's why we need a photo to be able to tell you much...But you do want to nip it in the butt if he is plucking already for some reason...

***Just to make sure, is he housed with any other birds in the same cage, or do you have any other birds that he is with outside of their cages? And did this "bare-patch" just suddenly appear out of nowhere, or did you see it develop over-time?

 

[fiddlejen]

Thank you for your response. I didn't get a chance to try to take a picture, and then this weekend when I was planning to be more intentional about it, I saw the bare spot had disappeared. So I'm guessing either the missing feather(s) grew back in-- do feathers replace themselves that quickly? -- or else maybe the patch was just that she was holding her feathers / wings in a way that made the patch appear.

(It WAS there for several days, really it was, before I got worried and posted about it!)

What does molting look like? She often seems to have little white bits of feather sticking up here & there, and then not. BUT, I'm not especially finding feathers around on her cage floor or anything like that, which I was kind of somehow expecting.

 

[fiddlejen]

( Oh, there are two other birds - a pair of not-really-tame baby budgies - and they are in eyesight of each other, but basically across the room. )

 

[noodles123]

Could be a molt, could be over-preening, could be PBFD...could be nutrition-related. Hard to say. I am a big fan of blood-work, just to rule out things like PBFD that can be asymptomatic in some birds. It's probably something innocent, but I would run a CBC and PBFD test for any bird (even if they had all of their feathers).