First day home

[pearlybaby]

Hi everybody! I’m having trouble with my tiel - it’s her first day home and I’ve already collected 4 feathers. Is she plucking, and if she is, is she plucking because she’s stressed? Is this normal behavior for new birds? Is there anything I can do to help her stop?

 

[Monaco]

Hi. How exciting to have her home! I found a lot when Monaco came home, too. I'm interested to see what everyone says.

 

[Tiel Feathers]

Where did you get your bird? What kind of feathers? Cockatiels will loose the small down feathers every day. The larger ones are lost when molting. How old is your bird? Most cockatiels do not pluck, and when they do it’s usually because of a health issue. It’s good to take a new bird to an experienced vet anyway, but your bird is probably not plucking.

 

[Tiel Feathers]

I forgot to mention, congratulations on your new bird too!

 

[Monica]

She's probably molting! Similar to when a dog sheds, they lose the old and get replaced with new feathers. However, it can take 1-2 years at least to replace *all* old feathers with new feathers. During that time, they may molt out some of the same feathers 2-4 times.

Molting generally happens once or twice a year although they can lose some feathers throughout the entire year.

 

[pearlybaby]

Thank you everybody! I got her today, and so far it’s been 3 small feathers and 1 big feather. I guess it’s not as bad as I thought
Thank you for the information about molting, too! I got scared that it was plucking, since I’ve heard so many stories about it, but I’m glad to hear it’s not out of the ordinary for cockatiels to lose small feathers.
Thanks again, as a newbie its sometimes difficult to tell if it’s natural behavior or something I’m doing

 

[Fuzzy]

Sounds like moulting to me too. My birds have been moulting like crazy recently. She'll probably lose another big feather soon as they usually go in pairs.