Heather F
Rollerblading along the road
Well, took him in to the vet today. The vet didn't see any obvious medical cause, but we are doing another round of bloodwork to see if there has been any change since what was taken last month, and because most of the damage is around his upper chest, doing a crop swab as well. He is both plucking and chewing at his feathers -- some of them he is breaking off near the base, others he has pulled out entirely.
It is more likely stress related than medical related, and there indeed have been some disruptions and stresses in the household lately -- the extended visit of the additional bird who went home about a week or two before we started noticing him worrying at his down, having to run the air conditioner due to warm weather meaning with the condenser turning on and off periodically through the night which might disrupt his sleep, one of the humans is having job stress, one of the humans also recently went onto summer hours which means that the morning routine changed a few weeks ago, we did a fairly significant toy rotation a few weeks ago (we usually only change one or two things at a time or just refill his skewer but this time we changed several things), and so on. Most of these are all things that he has experienced before, but I guess just one or two too many things all happening at once.
My poor beautiful baby bird. I feel less guilty about Mango chewing at her wing coverts because it's a habit she already had when she came to us, and we've figured out that she mostly just goes after her feathers when she is molting and/or hormonal. But we've had Frodo from a baby and to see him start this up and take such a chunk out of his chest feathers in the course of just a week or so is so distressing. He will always be our beautiful baby regardless of his feathering, it just is so sad to see a stress behaviour start up in him.
It is more likely stress related than medical related, and there indeed have been some disruptions and stresses in the household lately -- the extended visit of the additional bird who went home about a week or two before we started noticing him worrying at his down, having to run the air conditioner due to warm weather meaning with the condenser turning on and off periodically through the night which might disrupt his sleep, one of the humans is having job stress, one of the humans also recently went onto summer hours which means that the morning routine changed a few weeks ago, we did a fairly significant toy rotation a few weeks ago (we usually only change one or two things at a time or just refill his skewer but this time we changed several things), and so on. Most of these are all things that he has experienced before, but I guess just one or two too many things all happening at once.
My poor beautiful baby bird. I feel less guilty about Mango chewing at her wing coverts because it's a habit she already had when she came to us, and we've figured out that she mostly just goes after her feathers when she is molting and/or hormonal. But we've had Frodo from a baby and to see him start this up and take such a chunk out of his chest feathers in the course of just a week or so is so distressing. He will always be our beautiful baby regardless of his feathering, it just is so sad to see a stress behaviour start up in him.
