Seasonal plucker, bad molt or low humidity?

[katm89]

Hi everyone,

I have a hybrid Jenday/Nanday conure who for the last 3-4 years has been going through what I assumed was a bad molt.
Starts around September/October and goes sometimes through April. Then his new feathers come in and he’s a happy bird through summer. We moved from Louisiana to Oregon and about a year after moving the “bad molt” started. We have a wood burning stove in our house which I now know can significantly dry out the house so I’ve added a humidifier to his room. I’ve also got him started on the vetomega supplement in addition to flax on his food. He still seems itchy though and I would love any input on supplements to add or additional things to try. I really am hoping it’s not a plucking/mutilating behavior! Seems like if it was it would persist year round though…
Thoughts?
Thank you

 

[Sparkles!]

Could he be removing feathers that have faint smoke/soot residue on them? I have experienced this with foster birds, and when removed from pellet stove of wood burning households the plucking and feather damaging has ceased.

 

[katm89]

That could be a possibility… Unfortunately we just went through a snow storm and with the power out we had to rely on the wood stove, but we will try to lay off of it for a bit to see if that helps. When we’re initially lighting the fire we try to keep Gumbo far away, but I guess there could be smoke still in the atmosphere. Thanks for the input!