Feather Plucking / Feather Plucker / Parrots Continued

Of course there are many diet-related reasons for feather plucking. I will, in the weeks, months ahead, attempt to expound on these issues so that you, the caregiver of a plucker and picker, can begin to observe your feathered friend on a daily basis and maybe get a better understanding of what may be occurring in your friend.

There is also a direct relation between vitamin C and feather picking / skin mutilation.

Vitmamin C is a most wonderful nutrient. Decades ago it was touted as the miracle vitamin that should be taken all winter long to help prevent colds and flu viruses. But no one really understood why it was so important, they just knew it worked. Today, with advanced research technology, scientists have been able to identify why Vitamin C is so vitally important in the prevention of viruses and even in some cancers.

As is the fact of Vitamin C, it turns out that is one of the best anti-oxidants nature created for us. It contains an abundance of anti-oxidants. Just what are anti-oxidants and what do they do for a living body?

Anti-oxidants search and destroy free-radicals. Free radicals are a type of "trash" from foods we eat, waste that occurs from cells in our body that have completed their cycle, substances that are thrown off into our system as normal waste from just processing our bio-chemicals, as well as pollutants that enter our system through both eating, smoking, alcoholic consumption, breathing in air pollutants, pollutants that come in contact with our skin and are absorbed indirectly into our systems through pore transfer, etc. The purpose of these free-radicals is to perform permanent damage to blood cells thus inhibiting the body's ability to heal itself.

Vitamin C also helps prevent heart disease and athersclerosis by providng the necessary nutrients to keep arties and vessels from hardening with plaque build up. This quaint little vitamin does a magnificently powerful job!

One other side-performance of C is to complete the process of taking typtophan on up its path stopping at the production of niacin to provide the arteries and blood vessels with this important vasodialtor making blood flow more rapidly and thoroughly and then taking the left over niacin on up to seratonin, that little neurotransmitter that gives a living creature that feeling of emotional well-being.

Vitamin C also increases iron uptake. So if you witness your bird becoming lethargic, consider it may just be a deficiency in vitmain C, not necessarily iron poor blood per say. Most people have been trained to believe that all birds produce their own vitamin C and so supplementation with foods that contain vitamin C is not only not necessary, but we have been told it could be harmful to add C to our birds' diets. In my opinion this is complete fallacy. I do agree that synthetic supplementation can be harmful, but naturally occurring vitamin C contained in fruits and rose hips is a completely safe form to feed our birds. The body will just "thorw off" what it does not need. And if you are feeding a form of the Peruvian clay that so many parrots consume in the wild, the clay will act like a magnet and attract any over-abundance of iron and help it be eliminated from the system rapidly and efficiently.

Another small, but very important function of Vitamin C is its natural anti-histamine action. Many foods contain histamines (allergens) or elements that create histamines once the food is ingested. Vitamin C acts as a natural anti-histamine and neutralizes the histamine activity before it begins to cause allergic-like reactions in the body. This is huge in considering feather plucking and skin mutilation in companion birds and exotic parrots. If you have ever experienced poison ivy, the reaction it causes on skin is what many birds suffer when they are picking at their feathers and their skin. Sometimes histamine will feel like parasites crawling under the skin, sometimes it feels like insect stings and sometimes it feels like acid on the skin. It causes an itching and burning sensation that only increases in intensity as the bird picks and plucks. So the continouous cycle of plucking and picking continues and continues and continues until the bird begins to cause feather follicle damage, or even worse, rips open its skin to bleeding, or, until histamines are neutralized by proper foods or medication. The proper amount of Vitamin C in a bird's diet will help prevent and may completely eliminate this horribly uncomfortable cyle without the use of medicines.

I always consider diet before any emotional, hormonal or behavioral issues when a customer contacts me regarding their plucking friend. I will, however, consider emotional before hormones (Hormones are considered in the diet as well if phytoestrogen-containing foods are being fed.) and behavior only after I have made a thorough diagnosis of the diet. Why? Again, because without the proper amount of Vitamin C, tryptphan, the precursor to seratonin, the emotional well-being neurotransmitter, will not complete its cycle. Tryptophan will get "stuck" at niacin, causing a niacin overload and expanding the blood vessels so much that the vessels begin to "vibrate" and only add to the itching that is already occurring. To add insult to injury, seratonin is not produced which creates anxiety and then the emotional aspects of plucking ensue.

Feather plucking, picking and mutilation is a long time problem of the companion avian community. But if we research history we will find that feather plucking began shortly after the increased and steady use of highly processed bird foods. These foods contain ingredients, usually within the first five ingredients listed, that are known allergens....containing histamines. In addition, most manufacturers leave out Vitamin C because they fear that with all of the other synthetic vitmains they insert in their formulas, the addition of C will cause iron storage disease. Thus, leaving out the Vitamin C only increases the possiblity for allergic-like reactions to the first five ingredients and actually lowers the seratonin uptake by way of not supplying the resource necessary to complete the production of this important neurotransmitter.

Be very careful in choosing your bird's food. Select fresh organic foods when possible and a large variety of them. If you don't have time to feed fresh all of the time, find a food like BirD-elicious! that is minimally processed, not ground into powder, not extruded through metallic machinery and not baked to make it all stick together. Select a food like BirD-elicious! that uses over 30 different ingredients, all whole-foods or minimally processed, gently dehydrated and vacuum-packed in a barrier-protection package that does not allow large amounts of light and oxygen in the package that degrades the nutrients.

It is commonly quoted that "variety is the spice of life" and we all know that "spice" means "kick", "fun", "energy" when we use it in our familiar cultural saying. Variety is what your bird would get in the wild. Birds don't limit themselves to just a few foods unless their environment is poor, dying and dead. They are one of nature's best scavengers and will fly for miles to find what they need to balance their dietary requirements. Why feed a food that is poor in ingredients, dying in variety and dead in real, whole-food nutrtion? There just isn't any reason to feed such a diet unless you wish to take your bird to the veterinarian more often than it would ever go if it lived in the rich and abundant rainforest with varietal foods!

Feather Plucking / Feather Plucker / Parrots

I thought I would turn away from bleeding my heart out all over my blog about animal hoarding, bird / parrot rescue and sanctuaries and the truth about pet food and their ingredients. So I am turning to another hot topic, feather plucking in companion birds.

Our company is doing extensive research regarding birds who pluck, pick and self-mutilate their own feathers and skin. We have made tremendous progress in our research too!

At our facility we have two birds, Indian Ringneck Parakeets, who have been pluckers for years.

One, Saffron, a Lutino IRN, came to us as a juvenile and after her first molt began plucking her feathers and never stopped. Until our foods. The other, Rainbow, a normal green IRN, came to us as a rescue a little over a year ago. He had picked himself almost bald. Until our program.

The very first action we took with Saffron, after extensive veterinarian testing in which we learned there was nothing medically adding to her syndrome, was to remove her from a pelleted diet and develop a food just for her that contained only whole foods with added omega oils. This reduced her picking dramatically. After using this food with her for months, we decided to take another step and use only organic ingredients. This further improved her problem. She began to grow "down" back in. But this wasn't good enough for us and so after several more months we added food grade diatomaceous earth, "DE", to her food formula. The reason for this was that we learned that DE actually kills parasites within the digestive system without harming the host. We suspected there may be some amount of Giardia present that even the vet tests didn't find. And wouldn't you know it, she improved a tad bit more!

Saffron continued on this route for ongoing years. She never fully-feathered, but she had more "down" and some feathers than she had ever had since her first molt. Then Rainbow arrived at our facility.

Rainbow had been on a pelleted diet and a large amount of very low quality seeds with vibrant colored mini-pellet dried mash in it. You know what I'm talking about, I'm sure. We immediately removed his current diet and replaced it with our foods for IRN's, alternately using the regular BirD-elicious! IRN and exchanging that every other day with the Feather Beauti-licious! IRN. Again, we witnessed dramatic improvements. He began to grow "down" back in.

But then we noticed that as fast as his "down" grew back in, he picked it right out! This was discouraging. So we did more research and pondered. "Why is he doing this? Why doesn't Saffron ever allow all her feathers to grow in and stay?" We figured there must be an underlying problem that we didn't yet understand.

We followed all of the suggestions on behavior modification, but we didn't see any real improvement. Yes, there was some improvement, but once they adjusted to their new behavioral treatment, they returned to the same amount of picking and plucking. So, "it must be diet related", we thought. Back to the drawing board.

We then began formulating an entire feather-plucking program, simply out of the frustration we felt for Rainbow. We controlled his environment totally. Since we were based in a very dry area, Phoenix, AZ, we kept a cool water humidifier running 24/7 to maintain a 50% to 55% level at all times. Additionally, we sprayed him a couple of times a day with our Thera-Pluck formula that contains aloe, essential oils, minerals and has not only a soothing effect on the skin, but creates an aromatherapy to keep a bird calm. Rainbow had additives to drinking water that helped to calm him as well. We developed a Derma Oil to sooth his picked skin and increase blood flow to the feather follicles. His foods were further re-formulated to include more omegas, more DE, more minerals and more protein and sulfur to aid in the proper growth of his feathers. We controlled his light only allowing 10 hours of light each day and allowing him 14 hours of rest for his body that was undergoing tremendous change.
What a miracle! Within 4 months he was fully feathered!

Rainbow continued on this path until we moved. Then, he began his plucking all over again, although never as much as when he first arrived at our facility. Soon, we realized that it is not the one-time trauma that causes plucking, but it does set off a stress marker in a bird and that stress actually cause physical symptoms that causes changes in the blood vessels and ultimately the skin that encourages a bird to continue plucking.

Nonetheless, this wasn't good enough for us. We began researching even more. Adding this to his diet, taking something else away.

Today we believe we are at the brink of discovering the main diet-related reasons companion birds pick and pluck. We are witnessing dramatic improvements with Saffron and Rainbow and both are almost fully feathered now. From time to time they experience set-backs, but when they do, every time we can trace it back to a food they ate. We simply reduce that food, balance it by increasing another ingredient, or discard it entirely and we witness improvement right before our eyes in the matter of a day or two!

We honestly believe that at least 90% to 95% of all acute and chronic pluckers do so because of diet. We are firm in the belief that organic foods must be fed and that no pesticide residues, preservatives, "natural flavors", wheat, corn, or other common allergens such as soy or peanuts, should be used in the diets of companion birds. In addition, there are fruits that should be reduced or eliminated from the diet. Legumes and beans need to be fed in small quantities and an animal source of protein such as egg and/or insect protein should be added to the diet. (Not red meat, fowl or fish, these proteins are too dense for companion birds to fully digest and the protein that isn't digested gets thrown off to the liver and kidneys and adds strain to these already too often over-taxed organs.) Synthetic vitamins need to be completely eliminated in our opinion because research is indicating more and more that no one is really sure how well synthetic vitamins are, or are not absorbed. They may be under-absorbed in some cases and over-absorbed in others. The balance of synthetic vitamins going in to the system may be calculated to meet the demands of a bird, but how those vitamins are synthesized within the bird's own system is very questionable. So it doesn't matter how balanced the diet is with the addition of synthetic vitamins, no one knows for sure how the avian system utilizes them. It's best to stick with a diet that includes whole-food nutrition whereby the bird's system can extract out of the food the nutrients it needs at any given time. In otherwords, let the body do what it was intended to do. But this can only be achieved by feeding a widely varied diet. This is why we have formulated our bird foods to contain a minimum of 30 different whole-food ingredients and as many as 60 ingredients in some of our foods depending on the species the food is formulated for. WE endeavor to formulate the world's first truly species-specific foods to the best of our ability and to the best of research availablity.

We strongly encourage feeding only fresh foods, but if you don't have the time, as many of us don't, to buy at least 30 ingredients and chop them up on a bi-weekly basis (don't keep them for days on end, they will develop bad bacteria and aflatoxins that can harm your bird), then you need our foods. We do all of the work for you. All you do is open the package and feed. No refrigeration is necessary and the nutrients are neither powdered then pelleted or synthetic. Much like your bird would eat in the wild, our foods also provide the sense of texture, the sense of smell with the rich organic scent, they look like real food because they are. We don't alter the ingredients by reducing them down to a powder to form into a pellet. Our foods have all of the qualities of food your bird would forage for in the wild!

If you have further questions regarding your plucking friend, please don't hesitate to contact us at: Info@BirD-elicious.com

Undercover BIG Pet Food Manufacturers

"They" say "The best form of flattery is imitation" and I guess I just have to chock my latest experience to that! Occasionally I will have someone contact me about our foods and our products who comes across as helpless in understanding nutrition, how it plays such an important role in our lives and the lives of our pets, and how any diet modification can possibly help their "plucker". As is normal with me, I give full account to anyone who contacts me about my findings in my research, the changes we have made in our own flock, the changes we make in our products, and I answer any question that I can answer. If I don't have the answer, I tell them I don't have the answer. I have always been a person of integrity and truth. I cannot stand the act of lying. I have ranted many, many times about major pet food manufacturers and how they often use cheap ingredients and then tell the public that the ingredients are wholesome and nutritional, when the actual fact is that contained in the first five ingredients of almost any commercial pet foods are ingredients that can be had by ANY food producer in huge quantities at very low cost. THAT IS THE REAL REASON THEY USE THOSE INGREDIENTS. So I guess it stands to reason that occasionally I will suffer attack from individuals who are connected in some way with these BIG COMMERCIAL PET FOOD MANUFACTURING COMPANIES. They feel threatened by the information our company provides. And why shouldn't they feel threatened? FINALLY they have another pet food company challenging them? No matter that our company is small, very small. In business one never underestimates the potential of a competitor. But the big difference between "us" and "them" is that we do what we do for the good of the pet community. Period. We don't do it for profit in any way shape or form. Of course, this also causes them to steam because they know that they don't have that kind of integrity. They know that their real reason for producing the foods they produce is to put a profit in their pocket, why else would they use cheap, inferior ingredients? I hope our organization is able to get a strong "movement" of people behind us who want the truth told about pet foods. I hope that people are not complacent about this issue and just sit back and let the big manufacturers shove disinformation down their throats and pay those manufacturers to do just that. But if we are not able to get a "movement" behind us, then at least we made our small statement during the time we existed. And no one, but no one can say that we had anything else in mind but to bring hope and aid to the pet lover's community. Yes, I encountered another attack this last week. I willingly gave all of the information asked of me to this coy and cunning individual who posed so helpless and then came back at me like it is ME who is the villain telling ME that it is I who is hiding my research and ingredients. When, in fact, every single ingredient is listed on our website. Lab reports are listed. The dates of those lab reports are listed. Every research finding I come across I share with the public. I exchange email after email after countless email with individuals. I telephone individuals with my long- distance dime just to offer as much support and aid as I can. I ENCOURAGE anyone to try to get the owners of the BIG pet food companies to exchange countless and detailed emails with you or to spend their "precious" time away from their vacation spot just to speak at length and in detail with John Doe Public, the VERY public who buys the pet food company's owner and CEO's way to that vacation destination on board their private jet taking them to their costly yacht. In the meantime, our organization, which supports several non-profit agencies, will continue to research the best we can with the little amount of money we have, develop appropriate foods and programs, produced with only the highest quality ingredients, speak publicly as well as individually to concerned pet lovers, and sell our foods to the FEW who want to spend their hard-earned money on products that do what they say they will do, and live with the results that they endeavor to experience with their pets health. We will stay in business as long as we can and we will settle for the minority of the pet community WHO WILL NOT SETTLE FOR LESS than the highest quality they can obtain for their feathered, furred and leathered friends. We will continue to produce pet foods for the minority of people WHO DON'T BUY WHAT THE MAJOR PET MANUFACTURERS ARE TRYING TO SELL TO THEM AND THEIR PETS. Our company started as two people, George who is my husband, and myself who WERE and STILL ARE SICK AND TIRED of pet food manufacturers throwing junk out to us, in huge bulk lots, to feed our living, breathing family members, our pets. Today, we are still working 16 hours a day for that very same reason AND to provide our food to private pet lovers who truly care about the health of their pets, AND to provide aid and hope to people who selflessly give of their time to rescuing neglected and abused animals.

Pellets Are Poop!

I'm SICK and TIRED of it! In light of the ongoing research here at Passion Tree House, LLC I have to tell you, I CANNOT believe the "bill of goods" the food industry is selling us! I'm sick and tired of it and I'm going to start telling the world. Here at BirD-elicious! we honestly believe we are at the very edge of solving almost all avian plucking problems. How in the world these universities and other organizations can't get to the bottom of the problem with all of their top-notch researchers and scientists and the mounds of funding they receive is BEYOND me! I can only imagine that their research is funded by major pet food manufacturers. After researching, in depth, what birds eat in the wild and reading between the lines, it just all seems so darn simple. And you know what? When the resolve to a problem is so simple, it's ususally over-looked. Not this time. But let me, if you will, just rant a little bit longer. For those of you who know me, have followed my nutrition obssession, have read my many, many posts on plucking and it's close relation to diet, then you know, I am TENACIOUS and UNFORGIVING when I am sold a "bill of goods". Diet. THE FIRST line of defense against all illness and disease. So what do food manufacturers do? Take all of the raw ingredients and obliterate their nutritional content by grinding them up into unrecognizable powders, mixing them all together, adding water, pressing them into a "cookie-cutter" form, popping them out of an extruder and calling it "food". BS. The majority of nutrition is lost in the very first stage of the process, the grinding. Haven't you heard? When a food is taken and cut into tiny little pieces most of the nutrition leaches out of each particle, leaving almost no real nutrition. Let those particles sit while waiting for further processing and between light oxidation and air flow, what's left of the nutrition depletes even further. Now take those almost useless food particles and water them down, leaching even more nutrition out of them, press them together really, really tight, squeezing even more nutriton out of them, dry them out and you basically have,CARDBOARD. But now, because all of the nutrition has been ripped out of the individual ingredients, some form of nutrition HAS to be added back in just to be able to list the generally accepted "standard" ratios and percentages of vitmains and minerals on the "retail label". So what do they do? They reach for the cheapest form of sub-standard nutrients, in a form, minute particles or liquids, created synthetically, to "add in" to this already unreliable form of almost unedible cardboard. All just to raise the nutritional content in order to barely be able to list on the retail label that, yes, in fact, our food does contain "nutrients"! Now if that isn't enough to make you "fighting mad", then read on. So we have this cardboard containing synthetic vitamins represented as "nutrionally balanced". Let's add insult to injury. THIS IS A PROCESSED FOOD. PERIOD. In the true meaning of the term "processed food" is something that has been ALTERED from it's natural state to such a degree that the original form is unrecognizable. Science has proved that highly processed foods are acidic. What happens when a body become too acidic? Yep, you have it, illness and disease sets in. If the body remains at an acidic level for an extended period of time, cells become weaker and weaker and unable to fight off any disease that cross their path. The more acidic a system becomes the more unable it is to obtain any kind of normal homeostasis and bang, there you have it, a muriad of problems all stemming from the poor quality of what some call "food" cascading into more and more poor health issues. I don't know about you, but I have had it and I am waging war on food manufacturers. It's about time someone stands up and calls their so-called "food" what it is. JUNK. I'm sick and tired of manufacturers treating me like a mushroom, feeding me and my pets BS, keeping us in the dark and expecting us to make them wealthy while they outright LIE to us about the integrity of their products. Anyone with me on this?
Passion-ately, Machelle