Not again :(

[friend2parrots]

EDIT: I have edited the previous post - I changed the words "yarn" and "cotton rope" to "preening toys" . I dont want to encourage anyone to use yarn or cotton rope because they can pose problems if the toy is not properly constructed. so my advice is: use a toy, either storebought or DIY, that you know is safe.

I hope Ollie and Harlie are doing better now - and that you've heard back from your vet.

i was thinking about Ollie's situation, and it occurred to me that perhaps what might help, at a purely behavioral level, is if you offer a preening toy as a substitute for his own feathers. basically, target him toward the toy, and then click and treat when he preens it. then retire the target stick, and click and treat, and act very excited, when he preens this toy. hopefully this will redirect his attention to the toy as an enjoyable thing to preen, and he may concentrate less on his own feathers. for Ringo I had to hang preening toys all over the house in all his favorite stations, to encourage him not to preen himself when he was out of the cage. it was very disturbing to watch how aggressively he would preen when he wasnt in the cage, when he didnt have his favorite preening toy from the cage. so to deal with this, i put up other preening toys basically everywhere i could think of, and it basically kept his beak off his feathers.
as for Harlie, she might copy Ollie, as he clearly is dominant, so it would be worth it to train Ollie in her presence, and then train her to do the same thing.

this might help at a behavioral level to save their feathers. i do hope they are medically alright, and that these behavioral issues pass. my best wishes for you, Ollie, and Harlie during this difficult time!

[friend2parrots]

marie, I just wanted to add that even if it is a medical situation ultimately that is diagnosed as an illness that your birds are physically experiencing inside their bodies, setting up a bunch of substitute preening stations in their cages might offer them some relief from the stress of having an illness. They (esp Ollie) may be preening as a result of internally induced stress caused by an internal medical condition. thus, even though there has been nothing stressful in their external environment, they may still be experiencing stress, which they are trying to relieve through overpreening/plucking.

also I was reading some of the earlier posts in this thread again, and recall reading that they had sore spots under their wings - the fact that they both had them, and that it was ultimately not diagnosed as anything, is strange - do you think its possible that Harlie could be copying Ringo, and picking her wingpits, or plucking, in mimicry? i've heard of cases where a bird learns how to pluck from its roommates.

but it doesn't seem that it is entirely behavioral, because Ollie lost weight and "condition," as you wrote before. do you think there might be an allergen in their environment that both are reacting to, and that this allergen is not always present, only every so often? these are just guesses -

[friend2parrots]

sorry there are a couple of things I forgot to mention about setting up preening/plucking substitutes -

make sure that the preening toy is a safe one - there should be no dangling rope or string. make sure it is one that you think the bird will enjoy spending a lot of time beaking.

make sure to spend time as much time as necessary targeting toward the toy and clicking+rewarding when the beak makes contact. it might take a while for the bird to develop interest, but be persistent.

- when I was encouraging Ringo to preen/pluck the preening toys I'd hung up I stopped all treat-related training except this. thus, the only way for him to get any treats throughout the day was to preen the toys. i only resumed training other things when I was confident that he was reliably going to those toys whenever he got the urge to preen/pluck (a month later)

hope this helps, all best

[pionus]

Friends2parrots wrote
i only resumed training other things when I was confident that he was reliably going to the yarn hangings whenever he got the urge to preen/pluck (a month later)

Is the yarn supposed to stop preening as well? because birds need to preen in order for their feathers to stay healthy.

[friend2parrots]

EDIT: I have edited the previous posts - I changed the words "yarn" and "cotton rope" to "preening toys" . I dont want to encourage anyone to use yarn or cotton rope because they can pose problems if the toy is not properly constructed. so my advice is: use a toy, either storebought or DIY, that you know is safe.

good question, pionus. I should have actually written "overpreen/pluck"
I agree with you, that birds definitely need to preen regularly to stay healthy, and that its a normal behavior. Ringo's urge to preen/overpreen was so insatiable and intense that the preening toys served as a distraction, not a complete substitute. also, I suspect that in his mind, he did not see the preening toy as in any way conflicting with his natural normal self-preening, so he continued to preen and maintain his feathers. the preening toy was just this "other", exciting thing to get his beak on when he had access to it. I think it is impossible (and wrong) to prevent a bird from preening, as its a natural body function. but by encouraging him to preen his toy, and ignoring the feather-overpreening (I never punished the feather-overpreening), Ringo just started to see the toy as an appealing alternative. i suspect that the preening toy offered a "break" from the neurotic habit of overpreening himself, and was sufficient to prevent the feather-overpreening from getting too satisfying, and thus possibly lead to plucking (which would have been the next stage, I could see, from the intensity with which he was overpreening). also, he was already inclined to preen an object other than himself because he had gravitated to preening his favorite preening toy in the cage for stress relief all on his own, I never trained him to do that. but i do believe that if one tries, one could present a bird with an toy that can be preened, and target train and clicker train them with positive reinforcement to do it more often.

[marie83]

Just got back from the vets. The appointment went quite well apart from ollie taking a chunk out of the vets finger before deciding he was probably better off just to cooperate.

Once again his lungs and heart appear to sound completely normal which is good. I took along some of the feathers which have come off of his chest so the vet took a look at them under the microscope, he said there is no signs of trauma to the feathers but it appears they have broken off at the shaft this time rather than have been pulled clean out.
The vet did suggest ordering a little vest to prevent ollie pulling any more feathers but tbh, I'm not ready to go down that route yet as I believe it would cause stress to ollie and potentially make the problem worse in the long run, plus its not dealing with the cause. Between us we decided that to do some more bloodwork but more in depth than the last tests is probably the best course of action right now so my poor baby is booked in for Friday and the vet will do it whilst I wait.

A bit off track now but whilst I was there I asked about doing some work experience and they do offer placements so I'm a little excited that I can possibly go there. There are nearer vets I can go to that don't treat birds or other exotics but I think I would like to take the oppotunity to work with a wider range of animals if I can.
On the way back we stopped off at my parents for a visit where they treat Ollie to the biggest chunk of apple he has ever seen. I think Ollie thought Christmas had come early, his eyes lit up and he waved and played dead in return for it. I think now he is wondering why I am so stingy when it comes to giving him apple lol......

[friend2parrots]

good to hear Ollies lungs and heart are good. keep us posted about his tests on Friday.
he sounds like a good sport - I hope all turns out well for your little guy!

if he's that excited about a piece of apple that's definitely a good sign - so cute that he played dead an did tricks in RETURN for it! i thought it was supposed to be the other way around - do the trick to get the reward lol.

don't worry he'll pull through - Ringo and I send warm wishes for Ollie

[marie83]

Hahaa, well it was more the other way round, tricks for the treat although we do usually follow a variable reward schedule so he probably would have done it the other way round too

I'm hoping the results dont show anything serious but at the same time I really want some answers now, its getting frustrating with it reoccuring every few months.
Thanks for the good wishes, I will be sure to keep updating, if only in case it might help someone else one day.

[marie83]

I was having a bit of a wobble this morning, whilst waiting for Ollie to do his first poop of the day before weighing him about whether putting Ollie under even more tests is the right thing to do.
Ok its only for a minute or so whilst they draw some blood but ollie seems so small and fragile and obviously there is a risk when putting him under no matter how small. Yet in most respects he seems so healthy. Yesterday he was excitable, yet ridiculously clingy- 50x more than normal but I put that down to the vet trip, the day before he was more distant from the norm but still pretty lively at times but really quiet at other times, just wanting to sit alone and preen his chest gently. This morning he was all lively and pleased to see me, couldn't wait to come out his cage etc...

....So by the time he had done his big morning poop I had all but talked myself into cancelling the appointment "theres nothing really wrong with this bird, he wouldn't be like this if there was so it must be psychological after all". Then I popped him on the scales, he weighed in at 73g, now this isn't a bad weight for a GCC but he has been stable at 78/79g for quite a while now- on saturday he was 79g, sun 78g, mon 77g, tues 76g, Wed 76g and todays weight of 73g has made me to decide to perservere with the further tests, this cannot be normal, not when there isn't anything wrong with his appetite, he eats like a pig.

[marie83]

Well we went to the vets and had the blood taken. All went very smoothly and its now like nothing ever happened, Ollie is such a good boy.
The vet did want to do another xray for comparison reasons to his last one unfortunately the anesthetic did not last quite long enough so he decided to leave it rather than give him another whiff of gas. We now have another week or so to wait as the tests have to be shipped off to Germany, fingers crossed.