Stress Bars ?

[WBCmom]

Hey everyone, probably just being a helicopter mom but while giving my Caique a very non stressful nail trim I noticed what looks like stress bars on the ends of his tail feathers and a few on his small wing feathers and back, on the tips only I know that baby birds can get stress feathers and its common. He was weaned abundantly but his diet did have (breeder) a small amount of seed. The gallon dry bag that was sent home with him was slowly changed without the seed and I stayed with the Zupreem mix as its always done well for me in the past.

Here are Mango's details:
24 weeks, White Bellied, 139 grams, very active, very happy and fully bonded with me. He has done the regurgitating movement (no vomit) on occasions to try to feed me during our bedtime bonding.

Diet: Dry: Zupreem; naturals, fruit blend and nut blend. Reducing Pure Fun slowly, occasional nutriberries and almonds, walnuts for treat
Fresh: Eats: Lima beans, green beans, sugar snaps, sweet pepper variety. Tosses: Carrots, Broccoli and Corn, grapes. Will eat Apple if he feels like it that day.
Bird Bread daily: Corn meal, powdered; almonds, pellets, sprinkle of nuts and almond butter in egg.
Water: bottled Publix spring water, changed approx 3 times per day.

He has gained 2 grams, he is much better at landing now as he was clipped when I got him.
His droppings are totally normal and reflect what he ate that day.

Out of Cage: Majority of the day
Play Time: Moderate to crazy upside down with Toys, continual with my fingers and now, toes. He is not bored.
Bath Time: 2x week, preens daily

I had no idea what stress bars were as all my fids have had great feathers except for hard molts.

Being as my guy is so young, yes - I am a tad helicopter(ish) but Ive been a bird nerd for close to 15 years now and have never seen stress bars before. My vet is 2 hour drive which I would most certainly take him there if he were not acting so normal and happy.
I put classical music on and will try to give him more in cage time as I dont want to stress him out, his diet is healthy (IMO) and he is fearless, very social.

I know if I see him behaving like a trip to the Vet is warranted that will happen. How do I know if its common baby stress bars or the start of something ?

THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING YOU !!

 

[Mizzely]

Do you have photos?

Stress bars are super common in baby birds. Stress bars happen during feather growth and can be from any event that pulls energy from growing to "survival". Food is only one possibility. Moving to a new home, being separated from their parents or siblings, etc, are also possible.

Additionally, babies play really hard and their tail and wing feathers can also be subjected to bronzing. This is when the ridges on the feather are worn and flattened enough to make those spots look black or brown. This happens in mature feathers, so after they are grown in.

 

[WBCmom]

@Mizzely

 

[Mizzely]

Looks like a baby bird to me Nothing I would be personally concerned with!

 

[WBCmom]

@Mizzely

Consider yourself HUGGED !

 

[dutchlings]

@WBCmom Mango’s tail feathers are in much better shape than my caique’s!

My little guy had a Very Stressful time as a baby, he had a few toes and a chunk of his beak bitten off by his parents. He has a HUGE stress bar running across his tail and almost all of the tail feathers are horribly broken at the stress bar (you can see the horizontal break in the pic below), and he has smaller stress bars on his back and wing feathers as well. His bloodwork is perfect and he’s 100% healthy per our avian vet, just has ratty feathers that he’s now in the middle of molting. I can’t wait until he has new tail and wing feathers!

 

[WBCmom]

@dutchlings

Thank you so much for sharing that ! Ive always been around birds and even worked for Avian Vet over 10 yrs, I positively know what I am doing but I STILL after all these years second guess myself. My boss has passed away so I no longer get that free phone call and testing. Last night was odd but he could have sensed my anxiety but I could only do what I know. I limited our bedtime play, gave him a snack and some fresh water for his sleep cage. Just when I think ok, its ok, he's fine...he starts re-adjusting his crop and humping my hand. He is barely 24 weeks old. Hormones ? Of course I re-directed his attention and moved my hand but man, I barely slept then woke up and prayed. Seeing the pic of your little guy helped. I would rather have ratty feathers than something wrong.

Today is all about calm. Quiet routine and calm. The only thing I can think of dietary wise is the Zupreem Pure Fun that goes into his dry mix. I didnt give him any and just sprinkled some almonds over his pellets.

I look like your birds feathers. I have stress bars too...

 

[dutchlings]

@WBCmom I’ve got a lot of bird experience/knowledge as well and I turn into a nervous helicopter bird mom sometimes too! Blaze is 8 months old and he tried to hump my boyfriend’s hand once around 6 months, but he hasn’t tried since. He does try to regurgitate for both of us if he’s really excited to see us in the morning or if we’ve just come back home from running errands and are letting him back out, but of course we also ignore the behavior.

Is Mango showing any signs of molting yet? Blaze was going through a soft molt when we got him at 4 months old and he was gruuuumpy some days. He’s been going through a ROUGH molt for 2 weeks now but there hasn’t been much of a change from his normal behavior. Once in a while he gets sleepier 30 min earlier than bedtime, so I let him go to bed, and he throws the occasional tantrum if I accidentally touch a sore pin. And of course, he quietly screams at himself when he’s preening if he grabs on to a sore pin

I’ve actually switched up his diet quite frequently just to keep things interesting for him. He loves his normal chop of (boiled) sweet potato, carrot, yellow/orange bell pepper (he hates the color red), and baby spinach and kale, so he gets that every morning unless I’ve forgotten to take a new bag out of the freezer. He gets a mix of Tops, Roudybush, or Harrison’s high potency Pellets. He prefers the Tops soaked into mush, but will happily crunch the other 2. I’ll sprinkle a tiny amount of the seed blend from Tops into his chop every few days, and he gets the occasional grape or chunk of Harrison’s hot pepper birdie bread as a treat. We use slivered almonds as normal training treats, and small chunks of walnut as his high value training reward.

 

[WBCmom]

@dutchlings

No signs of a soft molt yet. He had 2 new pins one on each side of his face shooting out, sheath went to powder easily, no screech pain. There is something annoying him on his (R) wing shoulder as he gets p.o.'d when he preens them. So far havent seen anything or any feathers. He is a bit more 'downy' on his back in spots, so maybe he is starting to get some adult feathers. I dont know, he is my first baby. He likes taking a bath in his tub (dog dish lol) IF he feels like it. I spray him and he hates it. His water dish has become a mini bath but he cant get all "in" so I see him just flapping his wings like he's wet. But he isnt lol.

I guess I should stop counting weeks as he is 5 months now. I plan on introducing butternut squash and sweet potato next trip to the grocery store. Last night I was so distraught I even thought organic baby food. Helicopter moments. We have completely bonded and he is soooo active. But I am not seeing much in the way of expected Caique behavior. Maybe this will come in time ? Not one single hop ! But, he is starting somersaults but only inside the safety of his cage. We are totally in love, but seriously...hand humping at 5 months ? I got him a stuffed bird for the occasion but am mystified why it happened so early ? Could be a one off, will def keep my eye on it which hormones could explain alot but what is up with re-adjusting his crop ? This wasnt the normal I love you let me feed you thing, this was clearly re-adjusting. And HE was doing it with no contact from me.

I havent had any success with training other than step up and short flights to my hand. Although he can fly downward about 12 feet now, he does get tired. Other than step up and target flight I have never trained a bird before. I always just let them be birds. But I never had a Caique before either. I have watched some Bird Tricks and found it interesting but so far every time I have tried it my success was not as good as the video's. Wondering how many OUT TAKES there were per trick. I stopped watching two different women's video's (wont name them) as all of the birds were pluckers. Too big of a flock in my opinion and there is no Trader Joe's where I live. Makes me wonder if someone is feeding such a healthy organic diet and informative why are they all pluckers and getting Lupron injections. I dont know, it was rare at the clinic to inject Lupron, so rare in fact that I had to order it special. Still not sure how to train as he can fly away if he wants to. What is your training schedule like ?

After all my breed research before he came, I stopped watching YT Video's once he got here. He is his own feathered bundle of love. My education and AA helicopter therapy sessions are enough. Should we be emailing inside AA or just keep posting ? New to the Avenue and am not up to speed on etiquette.

 

[dutchlings]

@WBCmom I’ve been obsessively collecting all the feathers mine has lost lol. He gets mad at his shoulders quite frequently, even when not molting. He also hates baths! Zero interest in bathing himself in a bowl or plate, screams if we try to mist him. Will accept standing on the edge of a warm misty shower, or will occasionally whistle and flap around to ask for a bath when I’m using the sink, but the latter usually turns into instant regret and suddenly he’s hiding in my hair.

I feed him mashed up Tops pellets mixed with water when he’s being fussy. It used to happen about 2-3x a week when he was Mango’s age, now it’s more like once every 2-3 weeks. Don’t worry about him not acting like a typical caique, I was worried with Blaze initially too and it took about 2 entire months before he would play with any of his toys when we weren’t holding them. He only wanted to be with his humans and would turn into a sad little perch potato when we weren’t around (which was rare). Now he’ll happily play with them by himself, whether it’s swinging from them upside down in his cage, or laying on his back in my lap. I’m not really sure about the early hormones, but I think the crop readjustment isn’t too weird if it’s only happening occasionally? I’ve seen mine do it a handful of times.

Blaze was already trained to step up when we got him. We’ve been doing short distance recall training since he was unfortunately clipped before we ever met him, we intend on letting his flight feathers grow in as he molts. He is wicked smart and crazy motivated for walnuts, so training him for simple tricks has been really easy - he understood target training on the first day. All I had to do was wave a piece of walnut at him, point at the tip of the stick, and he ran over and tapped it and spent the next 10 min chasing the target stick around so he could earn his treats. He’s also picked up 2 phrases in the last 2 weeks and actually understands what they mean - “go poopie?” and “come here!” He’ll actually say “poopie? Poopie? POOPIE?????” if he’s playing on us and needs to go, and we’ll perch him on his play stand for it. Then he’ll say “go poopie??” and lift up a little foot when he’s done and ready to come back to us. He says “come here, come here!” if he wants a human to get him and play. “Come here” is the phrase we use for his recall training and I nearly fell over when he started chanting it on Sunday when my boyfriend went downstairs to work in his workshop. Didn’t stop saying it until he was back.

I’m not a fan of watching YouTube tutorials in general, so I’ve just been training him when he’s high energy and is hellbent on surfing in my hair unless I distract him with something that isn’t a toy he doesn’t feel like playing with. If he isn’t catching on or is getting frustrated, we’ll stop and let him do whatever he wants (as long as it’s something usually allowed).

I’m not sure about the post vs PM, I’m fairly new myself! I’m cool with it if you want to PM me instead

 

[Rædwalda]

Hey everyone, probably just being a helicopter mom

What is a helicopter mum? Does that mean you are hovering over him?

 

[WBCmom]

What is a helicopter mum? Does that mean you are hovering over him?

Yes, lol. Thats exactly it