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Urgent Quaker suddenly plucking.

Keltys

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Hey everyone. Our 2.5-year-old rescue quaker started plucking really bad last night, and I'm panicking a bit.

She looks like she is preening at first but then she starts getting rougher and small pieces to come out. Soon she starts to violently pluck out individual feathers. She really wants to be scratched and she seems generally uncomfortable.

We've had her about two months and she has anxiety. We recently moved into a new house with her and our other two parrots (green cheek conure and quaker), but neither of them is exhibiting signs of plucking.

She has a small cage (came with her when we adopted her), but a new one is coming in a few days. She doesn't really play and only likes to interact with us so boredom is a possibility.

For diet, she has been on seed all of her life. We have been trying to introduce pellets and fresh food as well as a vitamin spray.

For environmental factors, the house is less humid than our old apartment. We have started to mist her and put out a humidifier. We have also been using a lemongrass based spray to kill ants around our house, but the birds are never present when we spray. The smell does have a strong lingering scent.

Those are the only causes I can only think of. There have been no other changes in the past 48 hours and we have begun giving her a parrot CBD oil to help.

Thanks ahead of time and any help is appreciated! I would like to avoid going into the vet until other options have been explored, as we don't want to exacerbate her anxiety.
 

Cynthia & Percy

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The only way to tell for certain what is wrong is to go to your avian vet it sounds like it something physically wrong with her if she’s scratchy to I would take a tour avian vet ASAP Quakers for the most part do not have behavioral issues for plucking
 

Mizzely

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Actually I've seen a lot of Quakers with plucking problems.

However it is really hard to pinpoint exactly what the cause could be. Anytime there is a new abnormal behavior, I personally think a vet is the best place to start. Plucking can be medical, behavioral, or environmental, and of the three, medical can sometimes be the easiest to rule out or confirm.

Lemongrass can be a skin irritant.

What kind of vitamin spray? If spraying it on seeds in the Shell, she's not going to be eating much of it as they don't eat the shell. A vitamin you can mix with water would be more effective. I prefer Quiko or Hagen/Hari/Living World Prime.
 
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