Suddenly plucking after 16 years

[sidech]

De rien Allys ! N'oublie pas les bains réguliers !

[Pajarita]

First of all, he needs months and months of a solar schedule for his endocrine system to go back to normal - which is going to be the only way he won't be sexually frustrated - so hang in there because, if you persist and do it right, it will work. Nature knows best. (Yes, don't forget the baths but also remember to get a good full spectrum light (CRI 94+ and Ktemp closest to 5500 but never higher than that) and a good source of UVA and UVB (but don't use one of those lamps that you clamp on top of the cage, the light source has to be farther than that or it ends up hurting their eyes).

As to pellets, it's like everything else... When I was a little girl, we used to feed dogs meat mixed with rice and some veggies, then came the commercial dog food and everybody, including the vets, said it was much better for them but nowadays, the 'better' dog food is the one made with meat, rice and some veggies and the best is meat, rice and veggies cooked by the owner - It's a similar situation with pellets. People used to feed their parrots sunflower seeds, meat and whatever else one was eating and the poor things dropped dead left and right. Then came the pellets. They were made with a chicken feed recipe (imagine that!) but they had added lab-made vitamins so they were much healthier than the almost all seed diet we were feeding the birds back then. To that, you need to add the way they were commercialized. I don't know if you are aware of this but, back when they first came out, only vets sold them so the vets had a vested interest in their sale and, as they knew they had vitamins in them that the seeds did not, they recommended them not only because of the profit they were making but also because, in truth, they were a better food. But now we know that a dry-as-a-bone processed food (parrots natural diet is plant material which has 85-95% water content) that has no exact protein value (look at the labels and you'll see that they all read 'not less than' or 'minimum') and lab-made vitamins (which we are now finding out are not anywhere as good as the natural ones in food) is not the healthiest option for them. They are the easiest option because all you do is buy them and put them in the bowl, but they are not the healthiest or the one they enjoy the most. And, worst of all, people tend to think they are 'complete nutrition' and free-feed them (a no-no with protein food for parrots) as well as not worry much about looking for different veggies, fruits and greens to be given to the bird every day and making sure the bird actually eats them. Aside from that, avian vets don't study parrot nutrition or behavior in school so, in reality and unless they've own multiple birds for a period of years and devote a lot of their own time to study dietary ecology of different psittacines species, they know less than we do. And, last but not least, I've had three different avian vets admit to me that although they know that pellets are not the best diet for an animal that consumes fresh plant material in the wild, they recommend them because they don't trust the owners to provide a good diet as, even with pellets, they see the birds having conditions brought on by a bad diet.

But, when it comes to ekkies, pellets are worse than for other parrots due to the fact that their diet is much more specialized and requires more fiber, higher moisture and less nutrition. And, if I remember correctly, you feed Hagen which is made with soy, which affects the thyroid as well as sex hormones production so, if you decide to continue feeding him pellets, see if you can at least switch to TOPs which have no soy.

[stefanybezar]

I am very lucky because such type of behavior is not shown by my bird.

[Pajarita]

When it comes to parrots never say never. I've known birds to star plucking AND self-mutilating when they are in their twenties.