Care Of Plucked Parrots

If you have a parrot that has plucked more than 25% of its feathers and you've ruled out any medical cause for the problem consider the following:

The reason is most probably emotional in nature. In our case, Olivia, was an obsessive-compulsive. She also didn't deal with change very well. When strangers came over she would sometimes try to get their attention by entertaining them with her expansive vocabulary...sometimes she would sing and dance...sometimes she would hang upside down and pluck. We have since heard that creating a safe place, covered on two sides, might give an anxious bird a sense of security.

A parrots metabolism works hard to keep their body temperature at 103-106 degrees. It will weaken a birds immune system if they are spending all of their energy keeping warm. Consider a light near the cage to provide warmth. Also, this might be a perfect time to purchase a Plexiglas cage which will also hold down drafts. We don't recommend Plexiglas cages unless a bird is plucked or the owners have allergies.

If your parrot has plucked wings, do not use a tall cage. Low and wide is the answer.

Check with your vet for vitamin and mineral supplements to improve the birds ability to survive. We understand that a plucked parrot has a substantially shorter lifespan that a fully feathered bird.

For those of you who expressed such kind thoughts and those who were wondering how Olivia died, it wasn't for any of the above reasons. Olivia was totally plucked except for the head. When she plucked it was like she was obsessed and she focused on plucking to the exclusion of everything else. She often hung upside down from the top of the cage to do this. On Friday, Debra came into the bird room to find Olivia in a pile at the bottom of her cage with a broken neck. Apparently, she had been hanging and lost her grip. With no wing feathers she couldn't orient herself before she hit the bottom of the cage. We miss her a lot.

(This blog is purely opinion surrounded by random facts that we've either made up or read long ago and forgotten the source.)
- posted by J-Birds @ 8:05 PM |