Help...my bird is plucking his feathers!?

Question

I have a wonderful blue crown conure who started plucking about 3 months ago. Nothing has changed around our home. He gets lots of attention as his cage is in my office. His cage is HUGE-could easily house a macaw, and stays open at the top at all times, so he has lots of freedom. He has lots of toys, which are frequently changed out and different types of food. He does not eat a seed diet. I recently purchased a radio to keep in the office and it stays on all day for him. He loves the Carpenters (really) and I play that for him frequently. I also have some 'teach your parrot to talk' cd's in case he is bored, which he seems to enjoy. Basically, this bird has pretty much everything I can think of to make him happy, yet the plucking continues. Does anyone have any ideas that might help?

Answer 1

Well first off I'm going to assume sense you've had him for 5+ years you can tell the difference between normal grooming and plucking his feathers because he's unhappy, try going back to the way things were before play the music only some of the time, and if all else fails sometimes you just have-to give them a squirt with a water bottle when they start plucking, sometime I think after a wile it just gets to be a habit.

Answer 2

Birds don't only pluck because they're bored.  There are health problems that make them do that, so you should get him to an avian vet.  Since you've had him for that long, you'd know if it was just a molt, so that wouldn't be it.

Answer 3

Uhm, i personally dont think there is anything wrong because i have a cockateil(?) and it does that when it has a loose/annoying feather that clearly he doesnt want there.

i think its natural and he is fine, have had him for 3 years.

Answer 4

well it seems like hes fine you got a big cage plenty of toys and lots of food.but bird do pluck thier feathers because they have some that dont feel right it might be feathers that are agrovating him.

Answer 5

“Feather loss is one of the most complex and frustrating problems avian veterinarians see on a frequent basis,” said Jeffrey Jenkins, DVM, an avian veterinarian in Southern California. He sees between 15 and 20 birds a day and never goes a day without seeing at least two new cases of feather picking.

Pet Bird Species That Have Feather Damaging Behavior

Any bird can become a feather plucker, but cockatoos, cockatiels, quaker and Brotogeris parakeets, Eclectus parrots, African greys, lovebirds and parrotlets seem particularly predisposed to this behavior. All of these are species that live in large flocks in the wild. It’s not unusual in Australia, for instance, to see a flock of 500 or 1,000 cockatoos hanging out together in the trees.

“The flock species use their social environment as part of their mental health, and they do everything together. If one of them gets separated from the rest of the flock, the bird becomes fearful,” explained Larry Nemetz, DVM, an exotics-only veterinarian in Southern California. In captivity, a cockatoo that feels isolated from its human “flock” will become anxious as well, and this can lead to feather picking or other behavior problems.

In contrast, a nomadic bird, such as any of the Amazon species, Pionus or large macaws aren’t usually bothered as much when they’re alone. In the rain forests of Central and South America, these birds usually fly in groups of just two to four birds. As pets, nomadic species seem to be less likely to pick their feathers. “It doesn’t mean it’s impossible for them to do it, but it’s uncommon," Nemetz said. For every one Amazon he sees that feather picks, he sees 25 cockatoos that do it.

Other Destructive Behaviors

Besides plucking out their feathers, birds may also chew, bite, shred, strip, bend and over-preen them. This is done in varying degrees. A bird may only clip off the top half of its feathers and leave the bottoms, pull the entire feathers completely from their shafts, only nibble on certain feathers like the tail or the contours, or just pluck out the down and leave the top feathers. There may be only a few feathers missing in a particular spot, to every feather within reach of its beak being pulled .

A related behavior that some birds do is skin mutilation. A bird might nip on a bare spot on its body, yank out a feather shaft and make the whole area bleed, or gnaw on a scab or wound. Because it causes bleeding, skin mutilation is very serious.

“Birds can slowly bleed to death with chronic mutilation even if it looks like only small amounts of blood are lost at any one time,” warned North Carolina avian veterinarian, Gregory Burkett, DVM. If a bird hits a major artery, that can be an emergency.

Washington state avian veterinarian, Cathy Johnson-Delaney, DVM, figures that one out of every 10 feather pickers also mutilates the skin. “Mutilators generally start out as feather pickers,” she said. “There may be a spot on the bird’s body where it is accustomed to picking feathers, and there are no feathers there anymore and so it bites its skin instead. The bird may continually have scabs on its chest because it picks and picks and picks.”

In some cases, the mutilation may actually be a result of the feather plucking, added Julie Burge, DVM, a veterinarian in Missouri with a special interest in birds. For instance, she said. “If a bird completely removes a feather, the follicle will be open and more vulnerable to infection. There may also be pain from where the feather was pulled, just like if a woman yanked some hair from her head. The bird may begin to pick at the skin in the area in an attempt to remove the pain. This begins a vicious cycle, because the open wound hurts and itches, so the bird digs at it more and more.”

Feather Damaging Behavior Causes

What would motivate a bird to destroy its feathers or mutilate its skin? There is a seemingly endless list of reasons why. However, most causes fall into one of three categories: physical or medical problems, environmental factors, and behavioral or psychological reasons.

Included in the list of physical causes are viral infections (such as polyomavirus and psittacine beak and feather disease), bacterial and fungal infections (Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas, Candida, Microsporum, etc.), external parasites (scaly face and leg mites, quill mites, lice, etc.), allergic hypersensitivity reactions, nutritional deficiencies, poor wing-feather trimming, trauma (split sternum or other bone fractures) and hormonal imbalances.

A bacterial, viral infection or protozoal infection (Giardia) can lead to skin lesions or malformation of the feathers, which a bird may want to pick at. Nutritional deficiencies, protozoal infections such as Giardia, allergies and fungal infections can make the skin dry and itchy. Dietary imbalances can also slow down molting cycles and cause the feathers to stay in too long and become irritating.

A bad wing-feather trim may annoy a bird and make it want to do some of its own “trimming” to try to fix what the trimmer did. Likewise, a fracture that has healed improperly can cause the bird neurologic pain and make it start picking at the area.

If a bird's hormones are surging, it may pluck its feathers when it wants to nest. This is known as brood patch plucking. “Seasonally, some birds will pluck a patch of feathers on the chest or abdominal area that is used during incubation to transfer heat to the eggs.

There can also be a behavioral component to the hormonally-induced feather plucking.  Ã¢Â€ÂœMost pet birds are intact, but they have no mate, no territory and no flock,” Johnson-Delaney said. "They have anxiety from not being able to complete the instinctive breeding behaviors. They’re stimulated to breed, but they’re not in a situation where they can do so.” These parrots take out their sexual frustrations by picking their feathers, she said.

A bird’s sexual frustrations can be exacerbated if it has a “pair bonded” relationship with the owner. “A parrot can get really upset if it thinks its owner is its mate and then that person pays more attention to another person in the room,” noted Southern California veterinarian, Tia Greenberg, DVM. The bird can get so jealous or feel so rejected by its human “mate” that it responds by ripping out its feathers.

Environmental causes include housing a bird in a cage that is too small, placing the wrong size or type of perches in the cage, exposure to airborne toxins (such as tobacco smoke and aerosol sprays, which may make the bird's skin itchy), low humidity (most psittacines come from extremely humid climates and are bothered by the dry air in heated homes), and lack of full-spectrum lighting or the wrong kind of lighting. “The flickering sensation from a fluorescent light in the room can be very irritating to a bird and may be enough to make it pick its feathers out of frustration,” Johnson-Delaney noted.

Behavioral causes can also be a matter of the bird not having enough mental stimulation or being under too much stress. Often the parrot is simply bored and is chewing on its feathers to keep itself occupied. The bird may have never been taught how to entertain itself and not know what to do when it’s home alone during the day. Or, there may be something that is going on at home that is creating stress for the bird, such as a lot of fighting among the members of the household (maybe the owners are on the brink of a divorce), or the addition of a new pet or human family member. It could also be that the owner has moved the bird’s cage next to a window where it can see cats or crows outside, and that has it frightened.

Technically though, according to Jenkins, it’s not the stress that causes the bird to pluck its feathers but the day it figures out how to get rid of its anxiety. “The bird may have been stressed for quite some time and then one day, while it’s grooming, it pulls a feather too hard, which startles it, and then its adrenal glands fire off some epinephrine (adrenaline), and then suddenly the bird's anxiety goes away,” he theorized.

“Then another day, the bird does it again and its anxiety goes away, and then the same thing happens again. Finally the bird figures out that if it pulls out a feather when it is feeling stressed, its anxiety disappears. That’s the day the bird becomes a feather picker.” Jenkins said the bird is looking for the epinephrine rush, and when it pulls out a feather, it’s self-medicating itself. The bird is treating its anxiety with epinephrine.

In most situations, feather destructive disorders are multifactorial. A bird may start out feather picking because of a medical or management issue but continue the behavior due to a secondary reason.

“The physical problem might get resolved, but the behavior continues because the bird has discovered that every time it pulls out one of its feathers, it gets attention from its owner,” said Liz Wilson, CVT, CPBC a parrot behavior consultant in Pennsylvania. “The bird learns to use feather destruction as a way to manipulate the human.” In her experience, Wilson has found that the more upset the owner is about the bird destroying its feathers, the greater the odds the bird is going to do just that.

Stop Feather Damaging Behavior

But, you may ask, is it really that big of a deal if your bird is missing a few feathers? Is it something you need to try to stop?

“Yes, on both counts,” said Johnson-Delaney. “If the situation is not dealt with, the problem becomes progressively worse.” A bird that starts out just clipping the top half of a feather or two may begin yanking out whole feathers from the shaft. The bird may get such a kick out of pulling one feather out that it decides to pull out another and then more and more. Soon it may be bald.

“If your