Pulling out own feathers

[carcoozie]

Hey there all. I have 2 male society finches - they are not "aggressive" towards eachother although one is clearly dominant.
Anyway - they are losing their feathers - one under his neck (which has almost completely grown back) and the other has lost almost all of his flight feathers. The weird thing is that I watched the one bird pull out his own flight feathers (he can't fly now) This is week 3 for S76 (today and tomorrow) - they are also on FeatherFast and HeartyBird (alternated) and Calciumplus a couple days a week. We are just starting the 3rd week of this regimen. They also have seed, MiracleMeal, Dried herbs and crushed eggshell.

I am pretty sure that they might have lice? Is there anything else that I need to do - I ask cause yesterday I noticed one was aggressively "itching" himself again for lack of a better work.

Do you all think that there is anything else that I can do? Or anything else that it could be that I am missing? I appreciate it.

Thanks!

[6finchfriends]

could they be molting? One of my birds are dropping feathers like rain because he's in a molt. Though generally they do not lose all the flight feathers at once since that spells certain death in the wild.

[6finchfriends]

Oh I nearly forgot. This is also a sign of vitamin deficiency. could that be the cause? A woman I know had a bird that plucked all the time and the vet said it was because all she was feeding it was seeds.

[carcoozie]

Thanks for the response ~ I guess that I've covered all the bases (I hope!) so the little guys can get back to 100%.
Thanks again.

[nopEda]

When I raised chickens they did that when they didn't have enough calcium. They would pick at each other and if a feather fell off a bird they would all dive for it faster than they went after feed. Later after I learned to keep oyster shells on hand for them they quit picking at each other, and feathers would pile up when they were moulting. I got some oyster shells for finches at a pet shop. It's in powder form. I also got some grit, and sprinkled some oyster shell powder over that, and leave it in a cup for them. With the chickens I made a mistake and mixed it with their feed, and then the egg shells became so thick and hard a lot of the chicks couldn't get out of them and died trying to hatch, but mixing it with grit is probably ok. With the chickens the shells were crumbled shell not powder and the solution was to just leave them a container they could eat what they wanted from, but with the finches it seems better to mix it with grit than just hope they will eat the powder.