FINCHforum

Ok, kind of a long story, will try to make it short:

so my mom had a few juvie and adult goulds in a cage together and noticed blood on one's shoulder - thought he had accidentally broken a blood feather. A week later when I was home visiting, we noticed two more had the same blood on the same shoulder (left one). I was bringing one of the 'injured' birds (her name is Arizona) back to Guelph and took a photo of it.

One of the finches was pulling the primary feathers (just the first one or two) of the left wings of the other birds. So all of my mom's birds in this cage were separated and we narrowed it down to either one adult or one juvie with no blood/missing feathers.

All's been well with everyone for the past week and I was about to email a person to say Arizona has healed up and ready to go but noticed today blood in the cage and on the finches.

She is housed with another young gould that came from my mom's (not housed in the same cage before), one moulting adult gould of mine and a slightly plucked adult Zeb hen.

So I checked all of their wings today. Arizona's right wing is now missing a feather but her left doesn't seem to be any worse, the Zebra is missing a feather off of both wings and the poor moulting guy is missing about 5 feathers off of his right wing (could be partially due to moutling?). The other finch that came from my mom does not have plucked feathers but is missing 'fluff' from the elbow/wrist area - this may be normal, can someone please let me know?

So this narrows our plucker down to Arizona, but why would any finch pluck their own primary feathers causing their wings to bleed?

All of the finches have been separated now. Is there anything we can do stop this behaviour (Arizona will not be sold)?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

Pics:
Arizona's left wing last week:


Right wing:


Moulting gould's wing:


Other juvie (normal?):

Any sign of feather mite or red mites?...Don't forget red mite are rarely found on the bird, spending the day in nooks and crannies in the cage and attacking in the dark.
Paul.

This might sound crazy, but.....

"During this period, the birds require a protein-rich diet (feathers consist of 88 percent protein). During the moult, they also are more susceptible to bone fractures, due to resorption of calcium from the bone tissue. A bird receiving an inadequate diet occasionally may use its protein-rich new feathers as a supplement."

poohbear wrote:Any sign of feather mite or red mites?...Don't forget red mite are rarely found on the bird, spending the day in nooks and crannies in the cage and attacking in the dark.
Paul.

This only happened in one cage in each home. The common denominator is one bird that was in the first cage and was transferred to a cage at the second home. It is not happening any more at the first location.

What are the "signs" of feather or red mites? Are they visible to the naked eye? Would they cluster together in corners? All cages appear clean.

atarasi wrote:This might sound crazy, but.....

"During this period, the birds require a protein-rich diet (feathers consist of 88 percent protein). During the moult, they also are more susceptible to bone fractures, due to resorption of calcium from the bone tissue. A bird receiving an inadequate diet occasionally may use its protein-rich new feathers as a supplement."

Protein is found in hardboiled eggs and dried egg food I believe. All our finches get fresh processed hb egg (including the shell) every day. Here's a list of food available to our finches every day:

Hardboiled eggs w/shell, soak seed, variety of lettuce, carrot or other veggies, dried egg food, cuttlebone, herb salad, charcoal/grit/oyster shell, pellets, quality finch seed, fresh water, iodine once or twice a week, vitamins as needed, nestling food for babies.

Is there anything else for protein that we should be offering our finches?

Well I haven't seen any obsessive preening or sctraching but I've also been avoiding my room for the past week as I have a pair of Owls that've finally decided to sit nicely in their nest box.

I didn't notice any 'tracks' through the feathers either when I was examining the wings, and I don't see any in the original pictures I took.

I really hope it's not mites/lice, ick!

The finches at my mom's get eggfood daily with soaked seed, lettuce, carrot, etc mixed together. The guys in my house that aren't breeding get fresh hard boiled egg with the shell every other day and there's dry egg food mixed in with their seed. So it 'shouldn't' be a protein issue. Also, I don't think any were moulting in that cage at my mom's.

Thanks for your thoughts!
-Julie