by Pajarita » Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:10 am
Oh, my dear, the parrot diet question is one that we are all still trying to get right and, unfortunately for the birds and us, birdkeepers, the information out there and the one given by the avian vets is usually wrong.
IRNs are almost completely frugivores which means that fruits and other plant material make the bulk of their diet so free-feeding any type of protein food (seeds, pellets, etc) is VERY bad for them. I recently rehomed two older females that had had a real bad diet for years and years and ended up plucking, super-high strung and with liver damage for the rest of their lives. I fed them gloop and raw produce (with emphasis on large pieces of fruit) for breakfast (at dawn -without any artificial lights on until the sun is streaking into the room) and a single, level tablespoon of finch seed for dinner (at dusk with no artificial lights on from the time the sun is halfway down to the horizon and darkness after).
See, the thing with feeding too much protein is that the excess (meaning what is not used for muscle repair, feather production, etc) ends up in the liver in the form of fatty nodules (hepatic lipidosis) but it also means that the bird will produce sexual hormones constantly (because birds that are highly opportunistic breeders will react to the richer diet by going into breeding condition) as well as feathers (because the body tries to find a way of getting rid of the excess protein through whatever method it has and, as feathers are made of protein, it will produce feathers non-stop). A constant production of feathers is what we call 'soft molt' which means a molt that never ends. This is terribly uncomfortable for the bird and, to make matters worse, the plumage is not strong and healthy (see the broken feathers she has?) so overpreening, barbering and plucking is often the only way the bird has to 'do something' about it.
Putting the bird at a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk and reducing the protein intake will, in time (the longer the endocrine system has been messed up, the longer it will take for it to go back on track), correct the problem. But, I warn you, you will not see immediate results because captive birds (which do not fly as much as they should) have no fast way of getting rid of the bad hormones and plumage takes two whole years to get fixed (because the normal molt of a bird changes only half the plumage each year).
If this bird was mine, I would also put her on liver cleansers and tonics.