FINCHforum

I noticed one of my birds looking like this with what I guess would be "loose" feathers. I say loose feathers because I don't know how else to describe it. Slowly the rest of my birds are looking like this - the pic is of a juvenile but the adult birds look the same. Some have somewhat droopy wings... Any ideas as to what can be causing this? Should I be concerned?

I was just thinking. Could this be due to the colder weather? They are housed indoors but it is a bit cooler now that it's winter.

Here is one of my adults.

Well very possible cooler weather will make birds ruffle up as this is a way to keep warm also it could be getting time to moult which all birds get a bit down at this time lathargic ruffled up feathers and sleeping a bit more. Before you try any mess have a heat lamp available and see how they react with this so tight feathers then will suggest the cooler change in climate.

I think it's just molting

Betrue2yurse

They are starting to molt.
Need excellent diet now, rich in eggs, vegetables, crushed freeze dried meal worms, very good seed mix, multi vitamins, crushed egg shells, fortified grit and cuttle bone.



~Elana~

They are not molting. It also seemed to have spread from bird to bird. Initially only one bird looked like this and now all of them do. Any ideas?

That's really odd.

I was going to say that she looks like a juvenile, and one of my gouldian juveniles looks exactly the same. Sydney has little wispies under her wings, right on her flanks. If she l lifts her wings and replaces them down again, the wispies get tamped down. Then she hops around a bit and they work their way out again.

Sydney's older siblings had the same, but it disappeared as they've molted.

I have a couple others and some others do have a bit of fluff in the same spot - on the sides, just below the wings. But that's how they always look. I suspect it's just the angle at which the feathers grow.

Of course when they're sick, cold or stressed, they fluff up a bit. And feather-related changes occur during molting.
Is there any stressor that could upset them? If not and if everyone is acting well, eating and drinking, then I'd chalk it up to molting.
Sometimes, we become aware of something and then we see that thing everywhere, whereas before we didn't notice it.