Nimfa plucking its feathers, started 1 week ago. Help please

[bizilux]

Hello all... im new here

anyways onto my little bird called lucky. we found him about 1 month ago or a bit more, he flew to our house when we were working outside on yard. so our workers captured him because parrots cant survive outside for the night, it was quite cold during that time. we asked around few blocks but no-one was missing him.


when i was little we had few parrots and i've wanted a parrot for few years now, but our house has a lot of windows, so we never got one. this one seems to be quite intelligent, and he knows what and where windows are... quite strange really.

anyways long story short, i just love him, but probably 1 week ago we started seeing feathers around... i havent seen any in first 3 weeks, but now they are everywhere... i think it is getting out of hand, thats why i need some expert opinion. i need to do something about it.

most of the day he spends on my table, or on my shoulders, and i scratch his head from time to time

his cage, you can see quite a bit of feathers there.


and this below is picture of my table. i gathered these feathers together...
you can see the one on the top is very very big, it was the biggest one that went through his whole body. there were 2, now its only 1 left.

and on bottom right of picture you can see 2 that were on his head. i do not know how those are called, but they are special, not like rest of them, they are for decoration. so i dont think it is just seasonal grooming going on. because these feathers donnt have any flying role. and other feathers dont look damaged either.



full picture: http://i.imgur.com/NjEmgur.jpg

and this is his food right now.



full picture http://i.imgur.com/I8Oa1RF.jpg

he used to have different food for past month. i believe it was good food and if i remember correctly it had picture of nimfa parrot on it.

the problem is that he only ate those little round ones, the ones that he needs to peel. just those smallest little ones. so it just might be possible that he isnt getting enough protein because he only eats 1 sort of them, and not all of them like he should. anyways now we bought this bag that you see, and they dont have any big seeds in them.

he flies enough, we have big house, and his cage is mostly open, except during night, or when windows are opened.

i suspect it might be problem because he is bored? he only has toy in his cage, and that is a bell. but still he is plucking his feathers when he is on my shoulders and on my table... so i mean if he was bored he would just play with me?

while i was writing this long post, i had to stop him atleast 10 times because he was starting to pluck his feathers. and it is hard to see when he is doing it because he is on my shoulder.

so what should i do??? except for buy him some parrot toys.

[Pajarita]

Are you sure he is plucking and not molting? Because most of the feathers on the picture appear to have a 'dry' shaft and that means molt so, unless you actually see him pulling his feathers out or find feathers with a 'wet' shaft (the very end of it would not be white and dry looking, it would look and feel pliant and have a bit of pink at the end) , he might be molting and not plucking. I have found that birds that have had a bad life or were, for one reason or another, under a lot of stress (and, if he was lost, he was under a lot of stress), would molt about 3 weeks to a month after they come to me even when it's not the season for it. Now, those are a lot of feathers on the pictures so, if he lost them all in one day, it's a VERY heavy molt (indicative of an all seed diet which is not good for him) but, if the feathers were collected over 2 or 3 days, it's OK. It's still a bit heavy but not too bad.

Now, he can't eat just seeds. There is no vit C, betacarotene or any significant amount of phytonutrients in them so you need to give him greens and some vegetables (they are not fruit eaters). Cook some whole grains like wheat, oats, barley, brown rice, quinoa, kamut, etc until they are soft but still firm (use a lot of water, you can always drain it after) and mix them with flax and sesame seed (this is great for molt because it's VERY high in methionine which they need for feather production) and cooked and chopped vegetables like corn and baby sweet peas (you don't need to chop these), carrots and broccoli. At the beginning, use mostly grains and mix them with a bit of seeds and, when you see him eating it, start very gradually adding vegetables so he gets used to eating them. But, in the meantime, buy bird vitamins and add them to his water because you don't know what kind of diet he had before and he might be deficient. These vitamins will have vit D3 in them so all you have to do is put a cuttlebone in his cage and his calcium needs will be taken care of, too.

PS None of my birds fly into windows.

[bizilux]

i am not sure if its plucking or molting, that is why i am asking here. i dont know much about having birds, either than standard information.

it wasnt within 1 day. it was more like within 1 week period. and yes he was under alot of stress in first few days, he was scared and agressive, he is relaxed now and slowly but steadily getting used to touching now

i did bought him cuttlebone, and put it on the cage, but he hasnt made one single mark on it. so he probably never had one in his cage. so now i will probably take it off, and feed him by hand until he tries it and then he will know that its food.

i will first buy bird vitamins as soon as i can, and then i will read more about bird diet, i didnt know he has to eat so much vegetables... he eats some pepper when we have lunch, but that is the only vegetable that he tried so far.

i will also try and find some comparison pictures of what feathers look like when its plucking or molting.


we had these birds when i was younger, around 5 of them or so... not at the same time but when one died we got another one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budgerigar

and they all died from either smashing into mirrors, or escaping through balcony doors, we used to live in small apartment back then. i think these bigger parrots are more intelligent, or we just had bad luck...

[Wolf]

You could use a food grater on the cuttlebone and grate a little bit off and sprinkle it on her food. A little goes a long way.