Feather Plucking
As a matter of fact collars can be a real stress themselves to a caged bird, and should be used only in extreme cases, as a last resort for birds that mutilate themselves up to hemorrhage. On the other hand, collars prevent normal feather maintenance by preening, causing another stress to the bird.
Should you have eliminated the medical causes of feather picking, think about other things, like the boredom of a bird when it is kept in a solitary confinement of a house. The owner must make some changes both in his and his birds behavior. People should then spend more time with the pet to keep the bird busy and not resort to feather picking habits.
A good idea would be to move the birds cage in another more suitable location in the house, depending upon the personality of the bird. As an example, should you own a shy and suspicious African grey parrot, the perfect location for its cage would be in a private and quiet area of the home, rather than in a noisy one. Should you own an umbrella cockatoo, which is a very docile and affectionate pet, you must never leave its cage in a solitary location, as it may start feather picking. The best thing for it would be in a public area of the house. Last but not least, if you are keeping a parrot that has begun feather picking in a small cage, you might want to consider moving it to a larger cage, so that it can benefit from a more spacious living space. It might give up this mutilating habit.
If a feather picker has its feathers wet, it will start normal preening activities, so bath them daily. The parrot will have no time to chew on the feathers or pull them out if he is kept busy to preen its plumage.
Some of the birds that engage in feather picking may not rest enough and a good idea would be to move it to a more quiet part of the house, or to cover the cage at night, thus providing a period of total privacy and freedom. You can also eliminate the sensation of living in a ¾fish bowl all the time.
You can fight boredom on a parrot that keeps picking its feathers by feeding it a great variety of foods, especially foods like non-shelled walnuts and other nuts, string beans, snow peas, macaroni and cheese, that take more time and effort to eat. A good idea is to give the parrots foods of different colors, shapes, sizes and textures, meaning fun food, so that the bird can enjoy chewing them. By increasing the time for eating, the free time that could be used for feather picking is being decreased.
I agree- we have a Blue& Gold plucker- came to us like this, its habit all vet tests are clear, not physical but mental- he has a pinned wing and to many homes to list, we have him in a 5x6 cage largest kings cage on market, wood to chew, paper to shred, tried every product on the market- may as well throw money out the windo or feed the shreeder. We have to accept that this is behaviour he has learned to cope and maybe with time he may or may not stop. He is healthy, safe and appears happy.
Holistic(sp) Camomile tea steeped and cooled, mist and as bird digests it does 2 things, sooths the plucked area and new growth, as well as calms inside. Im going to give this a try since nothing eles is working. Buzzy has had a hard life and being thrown against a wall, broken wings and lots of people screamming and fighting, I know we have a long road, but he is such a lovebug with me.
We have also got our plucker on Liquid kelp this helps the digestion, which in stress will become upset and throw everything off, thus causing plucking- so far so good. But once they have been doing this for a while- its now also a habit fighter as well.
My parrot has been feather plucking for years. I didn't understand what was wrong in the beginning because I got this parrot from a friend of my mother's. Her son didn't want to care for the parrot anymore, so he was handed over to my household. In the beginning, there were two parrots. I saw them in their cage together, and by the time they were transferred over to my household, one of them was feather plucked by the other very often. I was only a kid back then, so I didn't know anything. The parrot, right now, is doing much better. I am talking about the parrot that was constantly feather picked by the other one (who unfortunately got out of the cage one day and died unexpectedly...). Actually, I don't know if this parrot is a male or female. I notice now the parrot doesn't feather pluck as much. A toy gives him distraction, but I think he needs more things to chew on. Any suggestions? When he has a toy made of wood, he just rips at the entire thing in just a few hours. His beak is very sharp. Sometimes he bites. Usually I can avoid it, but I don't know how to approach the situation. The time before last time, he nipped me at my arm, but I didn't bleed. And the last time he bit me was when I was closing the cage door. It hurt quite a bit at first, but then he was biting so hard my finger became numb and then I stopped feeling anything. He always get so upset with me when I close the cage door. I think he knows that is usually when I leave him, and he becomes frightened to be alone. So he tries to bite me through the cage bars as I'm closing the cage door.
I have a lot of guilt since I didn't know how to really take care of him in the past. Meaning I didn't ever play with him since I thought he would just bite me. He has bitten my brother, his friend, and my uncle on different occasions to the point of bleeding in the past.
I think feathering plucking has been his way of coping with boredom and stress. I've been trying to get closer to him. For a while now he has let me pet his head through his cage. I don't really get why he won't let me do that when he's out of the cage. I don't think I'll ever get close enough to be allowed to touch his feathers since he wants to bite if someone tries to.
He can't really fly, either. When he tries to, he ends up on the floor, and then walks around for a bit before climbing back onto his cage. He only ever climbs down his cage by himself when he becomes interested in something, but I don't know what he has interests in. A couple of times he climbed down onto the floor and walked right up to my sandal shoe and tried to bite my toe. I guess he was curious or something? Another time he was on the floor and he grabbed onto the seam of my jeans and got onto my leg, and then proceeded to try to get up my chest. This was the first time he did this, and that was a few days ago. His nails were tickling me, so I fidgeted, and he lost his balance. I guess that freaked him out a little, and then he was flapping his wings and managed to hold onto my hair for a couple of seconds, but then he flew onto the ground.
As for hand feeding, I really can't do much. Holding out something as small as a cheerio or a peanut has the potential risk of him lunging at my finger instead of the food. I need tips of what to feed him. He does eat sunflower seeds, but I try not to feed him that for the entire day. He also eats small finch bird seeds. His favorite fruit is banana. He doesn't eat peanuts much. If I give him one with the shell on the outside, he bites it open, and doesn't eat the peanuts inside. If I give him any sort of fruit with skin on the outside, he eats the soft part of the fruit, but ignores the skin of the fruit.
