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Introduction & Need Advice

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Introduction & Need Advice

Postby _piperandcasey_ » Fri Aug 26, 2016 12:09 pm

Hello all bird mommies and daddies!!

My name is Casey and I have an Indian Ringneck Parrot, named Piper, about two years old. I had bought him from a breeder when he was very young and raised him and is my baby. Lately, Piper is on a very good diet; Zupreem pellet food (I then add vitamins), natural fruits and veggies (apples and blackberries are his favorite) and I will make him a batch of goop and separate it through the days. I am very lucky to work for my self, so I get to bring my parrot to work with me every day. He has a corner set up with a cage and toys in my office.

Piper has suddenly become bald and I don't notice him plucking himself. I have taken him to several vets and have blood drawn. They DO NOT know what is wrong with him!!! He does not have mites, nor PBFD. His tail is gone, all the feathers on his chest, and even all the feathers on his head, which is normally unusual if he was plucking. Although he still has his same loving and wanting to be with me personality and very active, he constantly screams.

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this before?


:irn:
_piperandcasey_
Parakeet
 
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Re: Introduction & Need Advice

Postby Wolf » Fri Aug 26, 2016 6:06 pm

One of the first things that concern me is that you are feeding pellets and adding additional vitamin/ minerals to his diet. This could easily be causing toxic reactions in your bird, as this is not recommended. Too many vitamins and minerals can interfere with the proper functioning of he birds systems and the ones that are fat soluable will build up to toxic levels. This could be a cause of plucking in parrots.

Have there been any recent changes in diet, or in lifestyle? Additions or subtractions of other animals or humans in your household? Have you moved recently? Any changes at all?
Wolf
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Re: Introduction & Need Advice

Postby Pajarita » Sat Aug 27, 2016 1:03 pm

Welcome to the forum! Wolf is correct, pellets already have vitamins and adding more to its diet is actually real bad for him -with parrots, in most cases, less is better than more.

I would take him off the pellets and vitamins immediately and put him on a detox diet to cleanse his system as much as possible -there are certain things that cannot be eliminated through detox because the body has no mechanism for it so you just have to eliminate the component for a while so the body uses up this excess (things like iron, for example, and vitamin A and D3).

Aside from that, IRN (and all psittaculas, actually) have terrible molts - they are the only species that look moth-eaten when going through molt so another cause of his losing so many feathers could be that he is consuming too much protein. IRNS' diet in the wild consists mostly of fruits and greens and not a whole lot of protein so, if you are free-feeding the protein food (pellets) it's possible that his intake is way too high causing a real bad molt which, in an IRN would mean baldness. Ergo, if he was my bird, I would reduce the protein intake dramatically, eliminate any source of vitamin/mineral supplement (I would feed chop and raw produce for breakfast and a budgie seed mix for dinner) and detox him with aloe vera juice from the inner filet in his water as well as milk thistle, dandelion root and alfalfa in his soft food. If this is the solution, it would still take a while for him to get completely better but there should be an improvement in about a month (he also needs to be kept at a strick solar schedule if you are not already doing this because this will help to stop the molt so he can start growing new feathers).
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