Female Shaft-Tail keeps losing her shafts?
Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 4:07 pm
I've been sitting on a few questions for a while now but I've been waiting to move my birds into their new super big flight cage (almost finished!!!) to see if their behavior would change once they had more space. But now I have a question that's got me a bit worried.
I have a shaft-tail hen who grows out her shafts and then immediately loses them. When I got her, she had no shafts at all (which is why she ended up being named Shorty). However, she grew them out after a bit and had a long pretty tail. Then the new shafts fell out. I figured it was because they were getting bent or causing problems when she had her nest...
However, the nest has been removed for some time now, and today I noticed one of her (again regrown) shafts on the floor of the cage!
At first I thought it had to be plucking, but she is only in the cage with her mate, and he has never shown any signs of plucking at her, even when they had a nest and were actively mating. (They have no nest now and I work from home, so I can tell they are not trying to mate right now. Even when they had a nest, none of their feathers were in it, and her lost shafts sat on the bottom of the cage ignored.) Furthermore, she is never missing any other feathers except the shafts; everything else looks great. She and her mate preen each other very gently, so I just can't see either one of them actually pulling the feathers out, even when my back is turned.
Normally I'd attribute this to regular feather loss, but none of my other shaft-tails has lost shafts this many times. Could this be related to a health problem or lack of vitamins? Is she doomed to have a stubby tail forever?
I have a shaft-tail hen who grows out her shafts and then immediately loses them. When I got her, she had no shafts at all (which is why she ended up being named Shorty). However, she grew them out after a bit and had a long pretty tail. Then the new shafts fell out. I figured it was because they were getting bent or causing problems when she had her nest...
However, the nest has been removed for some time now, and today I noticed one of her (again regrown) shafts on the floor of the cage!
At first I thought it had to be plucking, but she is only in the cage with her mate, and he has never shown any signs of plucking at her, even when they had a nest and were actively mating. (They have no nest now and I work from home, so I can tell they are not trying to mate right now. Even when they had a nest, none of their feathers were in it, and her lost shafts sat on the bottom of the cage ignored.) Furthermore, she is never missing any other feathers except the shafts; everything else looks great. She and her mate preen each other very gently, so I just can't see either one of them actually pulling the feathers out, even when my back is turned.
Normally I'd attribute this to regular feather loss, but none of my other shaft-tails has lost shafts this many times. Could this be related to a health problem or lack of vitamins? Is she doomed to have a stubby tail forever?