Feather problems
Hi everyone, this is my parrot Noah. I’m coming here because i’m having issues with her feathers that have never come up before and I’m worried about her. I was wondering if anyone had any helpful advice. Noah has always had great feathers. She was never a grey that had any issues with them, she’s not neurotic. I know she does not pluck. She is happy, I don’t think it’s a behavioral problem. She has lots of enrichment within her cage and she gets taken out often. Suddenly, after her pin feathers came in this time, they came out looking like this. This has never happened. I help her as much as I can, but she is 17 and every time when her pin feathers come in, she often takes care of a good portion of them herself and she still looks healthy and beautiful.
Here are some things I think it could be:
- I was giving her the Zupreem pellets, but ever since they changed the packaging, she doesn’t like eating most of them anymore. Now this has only been going on for a month or so, so I wanted to wait and see if that was maybe a momentary thing.
- Noah’s cage was, for a about a year or so, in a room that got a ton of sunlight, now we have moved her to a room that has a lot less sunlight because the other option was not very practical and we thought this would be better for the bird because she could be in the center of the house involved with the family throughout the day. The other room was at a very removed part of the home. So i’m wondering if maybe the change in sunlight could have impacted her feather quality.
Things to note:
- Noah gets a very good seed mix (the rainforest exotics vitamin seed mix for parrots) in addition to fruits everyday and bites of whatever we are eating that we think is acceptable for her to have. She eats apples, bananas, and strawberries as her main fruits. She also has granola bites everyday with superfoods, primarily spinach and kale.
- She likes to scratch herself with little pieces of wood from her toys that she breaks off, but that has never caused issues before.
If anybody has any advice on what to look for or if something similar has happened to their parrot that they were able to find a solution for, please let me know 🙏 I’ve included pictures of what her normal feathers look like versus now. Thank you!