My parrot has stopped trimming the inner side of his upper b

[ellhnas2569]

Hello folks. FIrst time posting here.

I have a 38 year old cherry red conure with no injuries in his lifetime.

The last 2 months he has stopped trimming with his lower beak the inside part of his upper beak.

As a result the inner side of his upper beak has thickened especially on one side. This has lead the one side of his lower beak to grow much larger than the other side and his lower beak has become crooked.

I went to the vet and they trimmed the lower beak and brought it back to normal shape. However, they did not touch the inner side of his upper beak.

As time will go by the inner side of the upper beak will become thicker and thicker and the situation will become much worse for my little friend.

What can be done to help my little feathered friend? His behavior hasn't changed. He is active as usual and eats his food.

The vet I took him to said for now we need to stick with trimming and that he may have atrhitis.

I live in Queens NY by the way, in case you want to recommend a vet.

Help ?

[Pajarita]

Hi, Ell and welcome to the forum! A 38 year old conure... WOW! How wonderful!

To be honest, I've never heard of a beak that grows inward... Because, as far as I know, their beaks grow outward -mostly in length- and not inward. Did the vet venture an opinion on why and how this is happening? I would be very curious to find out what is his best guess on this. See, the thing is that normal (meaning not deformed by trauma or congenitally) beaks grow from the bed to the outside because the outer layers (the part of the beak that we can see and touch) are dead layers of keratin that are shed as the new layers grow from the bed (the inner part of the beak that is a layer of tissue with blood vessels and is 'connected' to the bones in the face) -we can sometimes see the actual layers when a bird gets a 'chip' on its beak. Healthy birds don't have overgrown anything so there is some sort of a medical problem here and I wonder what it is. Did he have an overgrown beak before? I mean a 'regular' overgrown beak - you know, the kind that is too long?

Now, at her advanced age, I doubt there is anything else that can be done except trimming it as best as the vet can. Personally, I would reduce his protein intake because regardless of whether it grows in length or in width, it takes extra protein to do that.