Over preening

[Beanikki]

Hi everyone
I'm new to the forum so forgive me if I do or say anything wrong.

I have a 3 year old blue crowned conure called Apollo and recently his feathers have become tatty, so while looking on the net I found people talking about over preening. Looking at the photo in this thread
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10083
from Andromeda, I think this is what the problem is as Apollo's feathers look exactly the same.

He isn't plucking them out, and is only over preening the feathers on his chest/belly and tops of his wings where he can reach. He isn't doing it to his tail or his long wing feathers. He does seem to be constantly preening, he has got plenty of toys and gets plenty of flight time/playtime outside the cage. So I don't think it's boredom.

My questions are:
Is it harmful or just a visual appearance thing - -i.e. can i just leave him to it or should I be doing something?
If I should do something, what do you suggest? Did any of the remedies mentioned in the other post work for anyone?

He seems perfectly happy in himself, is eating well (he has Kaytee Rainbow pellets, a few sunflower seeds as treats when he does as he's asked, dried fruit - he doesn't get a lot of fresh fruit & veg as he just won't touch it if I put it in his cage, I've tried and tried to coax him with it, the best he will manage is the odd bite of grape or other fruit if I'm eating it); he's playing with his toys and is a snoisy and talkative as ever.

Oh he does bath in his water dish approx once a week, and he comes into the bathroom when I have a shower but he doesn't get under the spray, he just sits on top of the shower curtain. I've left him bigger water baths out for him to use but he doesn't seem bothered.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Nikki

[GreenWing]

Take him to an Avian vet.

[Pajarita]

If his plumage looks like the one pictured in the thread you referenced, he's barbering and no, you should not leave him be because, usually, barbering is the beginning and plucking follows.

Now, as to what to do, well, for one thing, his diet is not good. Pellets alone and colored pellets at that, which are the worst of them, is not good. Conures are all fruit eaters and you are feeding way too much protein. This brings on hormonal surges in parrots and, if you are keeping him to a human light schedule instead of a bird one, he is, most likely, becoming sexually frustrated (the most common cause, by far, of Feather Destructive Behavior) so, to start, you need to put him on a bird light schedule (wake up with sunrise and to bed with sunset) and improve his diet asap. Parrots learn what to eat from their parents so you will need to eat with him early in the morning and that means healthy stuff (there should be no pellets in his cage at this time). Try cooking whole grains very lightly so they are still hard (resembling seeds) and mix them with cooked and finely chopped or diced veggies -you can use corn, baby peas and diced carrrots to begin with and add more variety later on- and sprinkle a bit of millet on top of it -just a little bit, mind you. This will tell him this is food and, as he picks the millet out, he will eventually try the 'other' seed in there (meaning the whole grains). Leave this food in his cage all day long and, as the sun starts to set, replace it with a tablespoon of a good quality seed mix but no more because you want him to fill his crop so he won't go hungry but not to have too much or he will wait all day for it and not try the healthy stuff. Tough love is what he needs so don't feel bad about it because his diet is no good and you need to improve it immediately.

[Beanikki]

Thanks for the reply. I thought pellet diets were the best for birds! Looks like I've been going wrong from the start.
Can you clarify a couple of things for me?
When you say sunrise and sunset do you mean literally? I currently leave his food bowl in the cage all the time.
So basically feed him the grains and veg first thing in the morning, then at sunset take that away and give a small amount of seed mix and leave that in the cage until morning?

Can you advise on a grain mix and seed mix that I can buy?

Thanks again for the advice.

[Pajarita]

I buy the whole grains separately from the bins in Whole Foods except the oats which I order from Barry Farms in Ohio (my Whole Foods doesn't carry oat groats) for their breakfast and all day picking food, and, for dinner my conures eat a combination (half and half) of two different blends from ABBA. One is a cockatiel blend without sunflowers and the other is a small psittacine one that has a bit of striped sunflower seeds in it.

He also needs to start eating fruits (all conures are big time fruit eaters) and this you can accomplish by eating them yourself and offering some to him while you eat (they always want what you have). It won't happen the first day and it might not happen the first month, either, but, if you persist, it will happen.

As to pellets, most people will tell you it's the best food for parrots but this is because manufacturers and avian vets (who do NOT study avian nutrition in school) tell them so and they are also the easiest way of feeding them without feeling real guilty about it but, if you do research on your own, you will find that it's simply not true. The best diet for them is fresh food, period. Besides, pellets are nothing but dried up, ground grains with added man-made vitamins (and some have artificial coloring and flavoring) so you might as well feed them a multi-grain bread and add vitamins to their water -it would be cheaper for you and better for the birds because, at least, it would be moister (parrots eat plant material that has 85-95% water while pellets have less than 10% which is not good for their kidneys), the ingredients would be human grade instead of animal feed grade and it would have no soy (with the exception of TOPs which are human grade, contain no soy and have food-derived vitamins)

[Beanikki]

Thank you for the advice. I will certainly make the changes you advise and hopefully I'll see an improvement.