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[Curious Diode]

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[Wolf]

Check the feathers for signs of damage especially to the shaft of the feather. It is not unusual for birds that live under a human light schedule to lose a few feather all year long resulting in a nearly continuous light molt. Also the feather must come out of the follicle before the new ( pin ) feather can start growing. This is not really a big deal, but it is a notification from the birds body that there is a problem with the light schedule.

[Curious Diode]

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[Pajarita]

Check the remaining feathers on its body, also, because, sometimes, they start by overpreening (you will see the ends of the feathers all uneven-like and ragged-looking) and barbering (you will find feathers that were 'cut' short and end up in a V or completely straight instead of the normal curve) before they go to plucking so, if you find either sign, it's definitely plucking BUT it doesn't mean that they cannot go straight into plucking without doing the other two.

The light schedule he needs to follow is the solar one (like the birds in the trees or the chickens) and what you do is turn on the artificial lights after the sun is out (8:30 am this time of the year) and turn them off when the sun is halfway down to the horizon (3:45 or 4:00 pm this time of the year). The actual times you turn on or off the lights varies with the seasons and how bright or dark the day is because, if it's a day when there is a bad storm with a dark grey sky, you would turn them on later and off earlier - see what I mean? The idea is to reproduce the kind of schedule a bird would have in the wild because that is how birds regulate their 'seasons' (photoperiodism - you can do a search on it and learn more about it).

[Curious Diode]

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[Pajarita]

Then he is molting. But he shouldn't be right now, you know? Molting is always supposed to happen after the breeding season ends and we are now almost a month after the winter solstice so the days are not only getting longer, their bodies already noticed the difference and will start preparing for the breeding season so you need to adjust his light schedule to the solar one for his endocrine system to be in tune with the actual seasons.

[Curious Diode]

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[Pajarita]

Sounds like a stress bar... but, as long as it's the only one, it should be OK. You need to worry when you start seeing a number of them.

[Wolf]

Of course, with something like this pictures are worth 1000 words or more.

[Curious Diode]

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