Ways to aid in feather regrowth

[swords033]

We have a 15 year old male eclectus. We have only had him for 1 year. His previous owner-who had him since birth. In the last few years of her owning him, she did not want to clean up after him, so she kept him in bird diapers. For three years he plucked from neck down. He grows random feathers back that are damaged looking and he either picks them out or they fall out. We feed him fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts,-no seeds, dye free pellets, and have recently begun giving him coconut oil and bee pollen 2 times a week. The avian vet we visited when we rescued him said his folicles may be damaged. Does anyone know how we can help him with feather regrowth? We absolutely do not care if he stays the same grey chicken we have now because he is the sweetest bird we have ever seen, but I know he would like the chance to fly again! Any suggestions/advice from experience would be greatly appreciated!

[Wolf]

Feather plucking is perhaps one of the most difficult problems to deal with. One of the issues is that it may become a habit and that is very hard to deal with as most of the time you end up having to find a trade off as most of the time the only way to eliminate one habit is to replace it with another better habit. Another issue is that if the follicles are damaged there is nothing that we can do.
Sometimes we can find the cause of the feather plucking before it becomes a habit and therefore can sometimes eliminate the majority of this issue, the most common reason that bird pluck is a lack of attention. There are sometimes medical reasons for this plucking, but I think that one of the major causes and one that is often overlooked is their diet. This is one of the major reasons that I don't feed my birds pellets. Most of them contain soy and/ or soy products and more and more it is coming up that some birds are allergic to soy and that the reaction appears to be expressed as feather plucking and self mutilation. Too low of a humidity may also be a cause of feather plucking as both the feathers and the skin can dry out and the skin gets itchy.
I have had three birds come to live with me that plucked, one of which also self mutilated. They are a CAG that came here at the age of 13 or 14 years old and she plucked and mutilated, then there was a parrotlet who was 9 years old and she just plucked and the last is a budgie of unknown age, she plucks and I am doubtful that she will ever regrow her feathers to any significant degree.
I have had very good luck in that my CAG has regrown most of her feathers back except for one spot about the size af a nickel, the parrotlet appears to have mostly stopped plucking and is regrowing feathers now. The things that I have done to help them are that I took them off of pellets, I give them as much natural sunlight as I can, I also added a full spectrum light for use while inside during the day and I spend a lot of time with them both one on one time and just hanging out with me and the other birds, I also keep water for bathing as well as a spray bottle for misting them, all of the water used for bathing and misting contains about 30% aloe juice to help relieve itchy skin and I also use a humidifier on days that the humidity is low. These are the only things that I know to do. I hope that this will help you with your bird.

[Pajarita]

You don't mention the proportions of each food you list so I don't know if you are feeding the nuts and pellets VERY sparingly or if you are over feeding any of them but ekkies require much lower protein than other species and pellets are really not good for them, even the dye-free ones because they are too dry, they might contain soy, and you don't really know for a fact how much protein you are feeding (look at the label, they never give you an exact value, only 'not less than' or something like that).

With a plucking ekkie I would make sure he is kept to a super strict solar schedule, exposed to sunlight daily (you are lucky we are in summer), fed gloop made mostly with low protein whole grains and high beta-carotene and vit C produce for breakfast and a bit of a budgie seed mix with some hemp and quinoa mixed in for dinner (hemp and quinoa are both considered 'complete protein') for breeding and molting season.

The other consideration with plucking ekkies is that some of them have been found to have an intolerance to salicylate so you need to eliminate all food sources of it for a few weeks and see if this helps -but you need to make sure there is nothing else that could be causing him to pluck like an over production of sex hormones or a high protein diet so you need to eliminate every other possible cause first or you don't get a valid result on the salicylate-free experiment and, as we are now at long days, it might not work for a while but I would still start him on it.