LexiTheEck
Checking out the neighborhood
- Joined
- 2/1/20
- Messages
- 4
- Real Name
- Red
Hi All,
My name is Sean. I adopted a female Grand Eclectus named Lexi. She will turn 15 this year. My only previous experience was with Conures, and Cockatiels. She was plucked bare on her entire body, under her wings, & on top from the front back to where her flight feathers start. The typical advance plucking Eclectus areas from other pictures I have seen. I took her the the AV. Clean bill of health and labs looked great except for a slight vitamin D deficiency.
She was in a sad situation. Her only owner passed away, and left her to his his nephew and his wife. They were very nice people. I try to stay in touch and they are generally interested in how she is doing. They just weren't bird people. They tried to do the right thing by buying Volkman Eclectus, and giving her some fresh fruit, but they had very little info on how to feed her, and she was living full time in a cage devoid of any toys or other stimuli. They would feed her treats through the bars and put her cage by a window for sunlight, but she was very nervous, and nippy and they were afraid to handle her.
I've had her for 2 months now. She is on an all fresh food diet which I prepare for her now from grains, veggies(green,red,and orange), sweet potatoes, and legumes. and she gets her 15-20% fruit with her morning meal, and a few nuts, seeds, and plain unfortified undyed treat pellets, 2 or 3 times a week in foraging toys I make for her out of cardboard, and the plastic puzzle type ones. I also put her on a calcium supplement, calming supplement, and a moulting supplement. She has a mineral block in her cage full time now, after tearing through 3 cuttle bones in the first week I had her, even though her vitamin c tested normal. I weigh her every morning after her first poop and before eating and she maintains between 436-444 grams.
When she first came home with me, I did put a ruffled e collar and hooded sweatshirt on her. She wasn't breaking skin yet, but she was bruising herself in places from plucking and constantly over preening. In addition to the foraging toys, She has lots of shredable, and interactive toys which I rotate in out and around her cage for her every week, and she gets plenty of out of cage time. I also let her just hang out with my dogs and I 3-5 hours a day, and we have a few short 10-15 minute 1 on 1 sessions a day working on games like tossing a paper ball, or me tossing it and her fetching it, I have just started working with her on putting the ball in a little basket, so I can maybe teach her basketball and clean up her toys later. Just little things to keep her from getting bored.
She has completely quit plucking and is talking up a storm. Seems like something new from her past vocabulary comes out every couple days, and she is starting to mimic some of the things I say a lot too. She will shake, or revert to excessively preening if she gets startled like by a loud noise like thunder from a close lightning strike she wasn't expecting, or she is sleeping and one of the dog barks outside the door to her room, but settles down and stops relatively quickly, and almost immediately if I reassure her.
I was shocked how quickly she was willing to trust me, and crave being around me with as bad a state as she was in when I adopted her. She laid me open on the finger without any lunge or open mouth warning and no eye pinning the day I went to pick her up, and slowly reached in to see if she would step up, but 2 days later she was posturing, calling/begging for attention and bowed down for head scratches, and on day 3 instead of stepping up in the perch stick I was using to pet her on her cage top perch, she walked right past it and hopped up on my wrist. It just goes to show some birds can look the worst, seem hostile, and are still really just be looking to be loved.
Shee no longer needs the collar, but she prefers I keep the hooded sweatshirt on her. I've tried leaving it off, like just not putting it back on after bath time, but once she is dry, and does a quick preen spreading some oil from her preen gland, she first gets Antsy, then Vocal, not talking calling or locating either, but loud sqwaks, and if that didn't work then the Tremble/Shiver thing would come back, and I'd have a Trembling Sqwaking Eclectus pacing back and forth on her perch, or climbing all over her cage until I put the hoodie back on. She has me trained pretty well in only a couple months. Sorry for the short story. I just wanted to introduce my situation before diving into a question with my first post.
*****Now they the intro is over, on to my question/concern*******
She has good growth of what I would call down feathers on any other bird coming in pretty much everywhere except the underside of her wings. That area is still pretty bare and what is coming in looks like purple or dark grey hair strands.
My big question is, the color of her new body and wing foliage is a mixture of white grey and dark grey almost black fluffy feathers. Similar to like what the base of the feathers on her head and neck look like. Her new feathers on directly under her lower mandible on the other hand already have red tips. Is this grey to dark grey color normal, and they will eventually turn red and purple as they fill in and get longer, or is this possibly due to follicle damage from her previous plucking and poor diet? She is still wet from her shower, but if need be I can upload some pictures of her tomorrow. I wrote this as she was taking it, so she wasn't mad at me for ignoring her and paying attention to my phone lol.
My name is Sean. I adopted a female Grand Eclectus named Lexi. She will turn 15 this year. My only previous experience was with Conures, and Cockatiels. She was plucked bare on her entire body, under her wings, & on top from the front back to where her flight feathers start. The typical advance plucking Eclectus areas from other pictures I have seen. I took her the the AV. Clean bill of health and labs looked great except for a slight vitamin D deficiency.
She was in a sad situation. Her only owner passed away, and left her to his his nephew and his wife. They were very nice people. I try to stay in touch and they are generally interested in how she is doing. They just weren't bird people. They tried to do the right thing by buying Volkman Eclectus, and giving her some fresh fruit, but they had very little info on how to feed her, and she was living full time in a cage devoid of any toys or other stimuli. They would feed her treats through the bars and put her cage by a window for sunlight, but she was very nervous, and nippy and they were afraid to handle her.
I've had her for 2 months now. She is on an all fresh food diet which I prepare for her now from grains, veggies(green,red,and orange), sweet potatoes, and legumes. and she gets her 15-20% fruit with her morning meal, and a few nuts, seeds, and plain unfortified undyed treat pellets, 2 or 3 times a week in foraging toys I make for her out of cardboard, and the plastic puzzle type ones. I also put her on a calcium supplement, calming supplement, and a moulting supplement. She has a mineral block in her cage full time now, after tearing through 3 cuttle bones in the first week I had her, even though her vitamin c tested normal. I weigh her every morning after her first poop and before eating and she maintains between 436-444 grams.
When she first came home with me, I did put a ruffled e collar and hooded sweatshirt on her. She wasn't breaking skin yet, but she was bruising herself in places from plucking and constantly over preening. In addition to the foraging toys, She has lots of shredable, and interactive toys which I rotate in out and around her cage for her every week, and she gets plenty of out of cage time. I also let her just hang out with my dogs and I 3-5 hours a day, and we have a few short 10-15 minute 1 on 1 sessions a day working on games like tossing a paper ball, or me tossing it and her fetching it, I have just started working with her on putting the ball in a little basket, so I can maybe teach her basketball and clean up her toys later. Just little things to keep her from getting bored.
She has completely quit plucking and is talking up a storm. Seems like something new from her past vocabulary comes out every couple days, and she is starting to mimic some of the things I say a lot too. She will shake, or revert to excessively preening if she gets startled like by a loud noise like thunder from a close lightning strike she wasn't expecting, or she is sleeping and one of the dog barks outside the door to her room, but settles down and stops relatively quickly, and almost immediately if I reassure her.
I was shocked how quickly she was willing to trust me, and crave being around me with as bad a state as she was in when I adopted her. She laid me open on the finger without any lunge or open mouth warning and no eye pinning the day I went to pick her up, and slowly reached in to see if she would step up, but 2 days later she was posturing, calling/begging for attention and bowed down for head scratches, and on day 3 instead of stepping up in the perch stick I was using to pet her on her cage top perch, she walked right past it and hopped up on my wrist. It just goes to show some birds can look the worst, seem hostile, and are still really just be looking to be loved.
Shee no longer needs the collar, but she prefers I keep the hooded sweatshirt on her. I've tried leaving it off, like just not putting it back on after bath time, but once she is dry, and does a quick preen spreading some oil from her preen gland, she first gets Antsy, then Vocal, not talking calling or locating either, but loud sqwaks, and if that didn't work then the Tremble/Shiver thing would come back, and I'd have a Trembling Sqwaking Eclectus pacing back and forth on her perch, or climbing all over her cage until I put the hoodie back on. She has me trained pretty well in only a couple months. Sorry for the short story. I just wanted to introduce my situation before diving into a question with my first post.
*****Now they the intro is over, on to my question/concern*******
She has good growth of what I would call down feathers on any other bird coming in pretty much everywhere except the underside of her wings. That area is still pretty bare and what is coming in looks like purple or dark grey hair strands.
My big question is, the color of her new body and wing foliage is a mixture of white grey and dark grey almost black fluffy feathers. Similar to like what the base of the feathers on her head and neck look like. Her new feathers on directly under her lower mandible on the other hand already have red tips. Is this grey to dark grey color normal, and they will eventually turn red and purple as they fill in and get longer, or is this possibly due to follicle damage from her previous plucking and poor diet? She is still wet from her shower, but if need be I can upload some pictures of her tomorrow. I wrote this as she was taking it, so she wasn't mad at me for ignoring her and paying attention to my phone lol.