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