Problems with feet

[LJ4RockPebbler]

I have a Rock Pebbler that continuously seems to be preening or picking at his feet to the point where he makes part of his toes raw in which we've had to take him to his aviary vet twice in 3 months. Once he was given oral medication which would help with him not picking at it and infection and the second time I was given an ointment which he absolutely will not let me apply on him so I do the best that I can which is not much. By the research I've done on this type of birds, I know that they're prone problems of there eyes and feet mostly do to fear and stress. He has plenty of chew toys and is practically always out of his cage so my question is, is their anything that can be done to possibly make him stop picking at his feet? I'm looking for any suggestions that people may have through possible experience with these same problems with there birds.....thank you

[Pajarita]

Well, there are two kinds of stress: physical and emotional. The physical is always due to either something like real bad diet for a long time or disease but, sometimes, it's a subclinical infection or a chronic one and you don't really notice any symptoms so the only way to have it diagnosed is to get a complete physical for them. If this was done on the previous occasions when you took him for the same problem, then you are dealing with emotional stress. With undomesticated species kept in captivity, stress is inevitable because, to put it simply, we can't give them the life that nature meant for them to have. Everything is unnatural, from where they live to the diet to the company they keep, etc. My solution is to try to make their lives as close as nature as possible and, so far, it has worked for my birds. What I suggest you do is sit down and do a VERY objective re-evaluation of your husbandry - check the diet (lories are hard to feed right), the light schedule, the housing, the routines, the general environment (as to humidity, temperature) and whether he/she can be lonely.

I'll be honest with you, I know that people think of them as companion parrots but, in my personal opinion, any parrot that is so very pair-oriented cannot be happy by itself or with a human as a companion.

[LJ4RockPebbler]

Thank you for your advice and you may be right about the companionship of another bird, never really thought of that. I have to mention, I have a couple of perches by the window of my highrise in which I live on the 7th floor so when he does decide to hang out there, he'll do lots of screaming sometimes like he doesn't do anywhere else. I sometimes wonder if him being able to see birds fly by might be stressing him out. That's about it and again, I know that rock pebblers are known for having problems with there feet but I was wondering if there was something that we could do on our end to possible keep him away from them other than making sure everything is to his liking and that he's not stressed out. Thank you again.

[Wolf]

Has his uric acid levels been checked? What type of perches are you providing? More importantly which ones does he use the most? What do you use to clean his perches with and are you certain that you have rinsed all of any residual cleaner from the perches? What is the level of humidity? And, of course, diet?

[LJ4RockPebbler]

He sleeps on rope perches but has different types of perches of all shapes and sizes. I use GSE and water to disinfect his cage and his diet consist mostly of vegetables, some fruit, Harrisons pellets and a mix of seeds. Humidity I don't know so I'll make sure to pick something up to gage that. He's mostly outside of his cage anyway but I'll still pick one up.

[Wolf]

The humidity level would be the same pretty much anywhere in the room that the bird is in and not just in its cage, most of our birds need a higher level of relative humidity than we normally live in, Rope perches may be drawing some moisture from his feet, this is just based on the fact that most of the rope perches are made from cotton strands and cotton makes a very good towel, I am pretty sure that there have been no evaluations of this as pertains to birds. The only thing that I would be concerned about with the GSE is that grapefruit is actually very acidic and in not thoroughly rinsed from things like rope perches might be acidic enough to a dry and maybe cracked foot to be an irritant.

All of this is simply based on common knowledge about the absorbancy of cotton and the acidity of grapefruit and the effects of humidity on a persons skin. In most cases these would probably not be something to be concerned with as a person would have to be extremely sensitive to these things for there to be any effect at all, but we really don't know how sensitive your birds feet may be to these things and really don't know how much they might be affecting his feet. The simplest way to know if they are affecting the bird is to change these things for a period of time and seeing if that helps him.

[LJ4RockPebbler]

That's great advice and thank you. Can you recommend a different cleaner and if not a soft rope perch for him to sleep on, what other soft product could I use that wouldn't be bad for his feet....thanks

[Wolf]

Actually the cleaner that you are using appears to me to be one of the safest ones that I have ever seen and read up on, Other than any fungicidal/ antibacterial effects of some cleaners all that they do is make water wetter, so to speak as water is the universal solvent. I think that I would just pay extra attention to rinsing it out of the rope perch as it can soak into it more than most other ones, perhaps soaking it for a few minutes is the sink full of clean water and then allowing it to dry thoroughly would eliminate it as a possibility.
In most cases the choice of sleeping perches for a bird is really based on location as they generally like to sleep on the highest perch. While the roughness of a perch needs to be considered, being soft is not usually a requirement for birds perches as they are uniquely designed to perch and sleep on tree branches and those are the ones that I position for sleeping perches for my birds. I do have some rope perches and they do use them but spend most of their time on the natural wooden ones made from tree branches. So I would position a couple of those for sleeping on and move the rope one. It may mot be drawing enough moisture through the foot to matter although it could be soaking the cleaner into its fibers and not being rinsed out thoroughly.

That is probably all that I would do until I found out if it makes a difference, Just rinsing the rope perch a bit more thoroughly and limiting the time on the rope perch by switching it with a natural wooden tree branch one, If it makes enough of a difference than you will have solved the problem without changing anything except procedure. If this does not help them we know to continue looking for why this is happening. It is normally best to make a limited number of changes at any given time so that you can track the results and know what makes the difference instead of making a lot of changes all at once and not identifying what actually caused the improvement or problem.

[liz]

Rambo's feet get dry and scalely in the winter. He picks the dry skin off to the point of making it raw. He screams like I am killing him if I touch his feet with medicine. I have been using red plum oil on them. It will pass when the weather changes and I can turn off the furnace. He does not seem to have a problem with air conditioning.

[Wolf]

The heat dries out the air and that lowers the humidity. you can counter this to some degree by taking Rambo into the bathroom and turning on the shower hot as you want to steam up the room for about 20 minutes with him in there so that his body can soak up the moisture or you can use a humidifier in his favorite room, but due to the dangers of mold you must keep it and that little filter thing in it very, very clean.