Parrot - Feather Plucking

What is feather plucking?

Pet parrots are commonly presented for 'feather plucking'. This usually involves the removal of body feathers – these may be either pulled out or chewed off.

Indeed, it can be so difficult to determine if a bird is chewing feathers or plucking that the syndrome is best described as a 'feather damaging disorder' (FDD).

This is not a simple situation and there is rarely, if ever, a simple cure. Therefore simple remedies almost never work. This condition mostly occurs in the indoor pet bird - this means that feather or skin mites are rarely, if ever, the cause as the parrot is unlikely to pick these up from another bird.

How can feather plucking be diagnosed?

There are many possible diagnoses and these may be grouped into three categories:

1. Medical – i.e. disease of the skin, feathers, or internal organs e.g. allergy, skin irritation/desiccation, hypothyroidism, pain, reproductive disease, systemic illness, psittacosis, hypocalcaemia, PDD, 'colic', air sacculitis, zinc toxicosis, pulpitis, genetic feather abnormalities, malnutrition, neoplasia.
2. Social – e.g. poor socialisation, failure to learn preening, overtiredness, non-bathing.
3. Behavioural – a variety of different behavioural problems have been proposed to cause this syndrome, including separation anxiety, attention-seeking, general anxiety, etc. Proposals such as this being stereotypical or a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder are controversial.

Simple boredom is rarely contributory as birds tend to need specific foraging activities rather than just 'something to do'.

It is also true that most cases will have more than one contributory factor. This means that these cases are difficult, expensive and time-consuming to investigate. It also means that treatment failures are common as it is so difficult to diagnose and treat so many concurrent problems.

How is feather plucking treated?

Typically, your veterinary surgeon will start by ruling out medical disorders both by means of diagnostic testing and by trial therapy.

The next stage is to improve the bird’s lifestyle to reduce the social causes of plucking.

Finally, behavioural causes are investigated. These are by far the most difficult to control and require a lot of commitment from all the parrot owner’s family to put right as drug therapy alone is rarely effective.

Can feather plucking be prevented?

Collars are not often used now as the distress caused by these will often outweigh the advantages to the bird.

Overall, if your parrot shows signs of FDD it is very important to seek advice promptly from a veterinary surgeon experienced in parrot medicine, and to be realistic about the goals of therapy – often it is impossible to completely stop the bird damaging its feathers but it will be a lot happier in its lifestyle.

It is better still to avoid this problem altogether and good advice about husbandry, diet and training will often result in a happy parrot that does not begin to pluck.