FINCHforum

My female zeeb was having feather plucking on back and I noticed some bleeding on the back so I removed her to a seperate cage from her male friend for 2 weeks. Most of the feathers grew back excepet a tiny area right at the bottom of her neck/shoulder and I thought all was ok.

I put her back in the cage with the male today, less than 5 minutes a notice blood on her back in the neck area, it was pretty severe and was seeping around her whole neck looking like a collar of blood.

I removed her, washed the area, used some blood stop powder, made sure it has stopped and put her in a seperate cage. She has no bleeding now, but when I was tending to it the blood was coming a clear section of skin right on the middle of her neck/shoulder, like a tiny pin prick of blood seeping out this one place, no gash or cut I could see. In the pic she was bleeding where the arrow is.

(most of the feathers re grew from that pic being taken but there was some bare like you see right on her neck meets her shoulder so if she extended her head to eat or something you could see a bare spot)



What could be the cause of this, is it from the male nibbling on her neck which he had been doing lately and is just bare skin since no feathers re grew in this one small area and making a tiny cut with his beak?

She appears happier in the new cage and I hesitate to put her back with the male since the bleeding this time was way worse than before.

Few questions, will the male be cool by himself, his flight cage is in the middle with another pair of zeebs to his left and the female in a cage to his right.

I would keep her separated at least until she heals up.

It could be the male doing this to her but they also are capable of doing this to themselves while in the sleeping position with their heads turned backward. One of mine that was alone used to do this to himself.

You may have to keep her permanently separated from the male.
Some birds are VERY aggressive pluckers.

I have a hen that did that to her cagemate (another hen), in front of the left shoulder. Blood was all over the cage. What surprised me was that they previously seemed to be best buddies.
I separated her, cleaned her up and she started to mend.
After she was OK, I put her back and...again blood all over the cage.
I pulled her out, took care of the bleeding and this time KEPT her separated from the other hen.

Then she started picking on the wound, like a kick picking their scab, the wound would periodically start to bleed, and just never healed. It got to a point where I think she lost enough blood that her body could not replace it, and she just got weaker and weaker...until she got to the point that I decided to end her suffering and gas her.

Now that she is separated from the male, if you put any other bird in with that male, you need to keep an eye on the bird. He may pluck that bird to bleeding in the same way he did the hen. Some birds just have a particular "undesired" behavior.

Thank you for the help.

I am going to keep them seperated since she probably wont survive such a major blood loss again. They were fine together for years, but I guess she lost to many feathers in that certain area and any grooming will cause trouble.