Fajr's first moult

[shiraartain]

He's been growing new feathers for a few months now so I didn't pay much attention to the sudden burst of new pin feathers, but then he bathed enthusiastically twice in the same day and I saw the feathers lying around in his cage, and now feathers come out while i'm trying to give him scritches...He's not significantly irritable and one of my sisters bathes him daily, but is there any other way I can make this easier on him? I plan to make a bathing bowl available to him in his cage, but I can't think of anything beyond that.

I tried to lightly spray him with water, but he hates the water bottle, so that's null.

I would have posted about this earlier, but I wanted to be sure that he wasn't plucking first. The feather shafts are whole with no blood on them and sometimes feathers will fall out while i'm petting him, so definitely his first moult.

Also helpful would be knowing the general length of the first moult. So far my search has turned up with "months" .

[Wolf]

I have a tendency to add aloe to the bird bath water both in the spray bottle and in their bathing dish. If it does nothing else it does seem to make them less itchy.
How long is the molt ? This is a great question and I wish I had as great of an answer to it. No one knows all about the process as there are many factors involved such as the light, a molt is affected by the intensity, the wavelength and apparently even the curvature of the light received by the bird. The process is also intimately linked to the birds reproductive cycles as both are controlled by the birds internal clock, which is extremely accurate, unless the bird is kept on a human light schedule and human lighting sources in which case the internal becomes free running and is no longer accurate. If the bird is kept to a solar light schedule as well as only supplied with solar lighting it's molts have a tendency to have a shorter duration usually being completed in about a month. Birds on a human light schedule can take several months to complete a molt and some birds seem to be in an almost constant state of molt, just losing a few feather at a time but doing so all year long.
Well that is molting as I understand it, I hope that it helps you some.

[Pajarita]

A normal molting takes 6 to 8 weeks.

My GCC likes her baths any which way she can get them: spray bottle, bowl AND she also likes (not all the time, she lets me know when -she climbs down from my shoulder and perches on my hand when I am washing dishes at the sink) to bathe under the running faucet (not a hard stream but also not just a tiny trickle).

[shiraartain]

Thank you for your responses! I will try and get my hands on some aloe asap.

The main reason I wanted a time measure was just to know for the sake of it partially and also partially because if the moulting time is terribly off, I can know something is wrong immediately.

Parjarita, I'm trying my best to introduce him to different types of baths, but he is just not having it lol. I tried getting him a bigger bathing tray and he hated it. Tried misting him and nope. The only bathing methods that work are showers with us and baths with a slight stream of water from the faucet going directly into the bowl (which, in my opinion, is too small, but he refuses anything else) . At the end of the second method I pour the water left in the bowl over his back so that the tail feather keratin sheaths soften at least a little.

[Wolf]

If he takes baths under running water in a sink, have you tried putting the stopper in so that it doesn't drain ?

[shiraartain]

Wolf, that was one of the original techniques I tried, but he would rarely want to go with bathing directly in that sink. He consistently bathes in the bowl, though. Now the new parrots are in the room with the sink I used to use for that anyways. Our other two sinks are bathroom sinks which I don't to bathe him directly in, and the kitchen sink. I'll try giving it a shot after the quarantine period though, thanks for the idea!

[Wolf]

Kookooloo will only bathe in her water dish or by getting sprayed. She likes the spray bottle and turns and lifts her wings and shoves her face into the spray. Kiki will only bathe in the bird bath that I got her and the same with Skeeter, only the bird bath. Mimi does the water bowl bathing mostly to tell us that it is time to spray her down. I don't mind spraying them but I would prefer that they bathe themselves when they want to and I keep trying different shapes and sizes and colors of dishes for the baths for the larger birds. They are so picky about what they bathe with that it is similar in some ways to the process of improving their diet.

[Pajarita]

Yes, some of them are VERY picky about how they get their bath. Isis, the redbelly, will ONLY bathe in the large stainless steel bowl where the large dogs drink their water from and NOT any other! So, every morning, I have to wash it thoroughly with soap, fill it with cold water, put it back down on the floor (it has to be on the floor and NOT on the table) and wait for her to decide whether she wants a bath that morning or not - and I do this by standing between the bowl and the dogs for minutes at a time (wasting my precious morning chores time!!!). And, you know what the weirdest thing is about the whole thing? The water level has to be almost all the way up to the edge because, apparently, what she likes about this bowl is not only that it's large and on the floor but also that it's so deep that she can get all the way up to her neck in the water -something I have NEVER EVER seen another bird do!

[shiraartain]

Bathed him this morning then about 6 hours later he started rubbing his head on my hair, ears, and then my face while I was trying to take notes. Poor thing really seemed uncomfortable so I put down the pen and started scratching him (so many pin feathers!!!) until my sister went to take a shower and sent him along with her for a second bath. I'm considering rewarding him with millet every time I mist him in an attempt to get him to tolerate it at least because I truly believe it would make things easier on him. Wolf, can I get more details on the aloe? I mentioned it to my mother and she was asking what form we need-we have capsules, but I'm assuming those wont' work.

[Wolf]

I get an alcohol free 100% aloe juice made from the fillet, it is also totally organic. I put about an ounce in about 12 ounces of water for bathing and I mix about 2 ounces of the aloe in the spray bottle which I then fill up with water. Since my larger birds try to bathe in their drinking water I only use the 1 ounce although it is supposed to be not only safe for them to drink it is supposed to aid digestion.