Molting

[Siobhan]

Maggie's been molting big time for about a week and a half and I think she's finally slowing down. Because we're used to the parrots' molting schedule (spring and fall), at first we were afraid she was plucking, though I thought only parrots were prone to that, but no, she's just molting. What a mess. LOL I thought the parrots' molts were bad, but some mornings her cage looked like it had snowed in there with all the white feathers and fluff scattered around. There's still a lot of fluff, but the full feathers are far fewer in number now, and with the parrots, that means they're almost finished. I suppose an indoor bird's molting isn't dependent on the season the way it would be if she were wild. I keep a jar of the birds' various feathers and now I have several of hers to add to it.

[Cyreen]

I had both Joule and Ollie molting at the same time. Somehow, despite all Joule's pin feathers, Ollie definitely out does her in the feather department. With the amount of feathers flying loose, there ought to be a naked chicken running around my house.

[fantaillover100]

my to male pigeons one of them is molting on the head and ones molting under the wings. Weird thing is the females arnt molting. =]

[Siobhan]

You ought to see Maggie's head. She looks like she needs to comb her hair. LOL Poor baby, I shouldn't make fun even if she doesn't know I'm doing it, but she does look messy. At least her tail, which was kind of ragged from her living in a too-small cage for so long, has begun to grow fresh feathers, and looks like a proper tail again.

[spirit wings]

sometimes they will molt out with better care and food.. usually the big molt will start at the end of summer into the fall months.. at least the loft kept ones..

[Cyreen]

I thought it might be because she's a house pigeon; but yeah, Ollie does one big molt and a couple mini molts per year.

[Siobhan]

She's being more social now, so she must be getting over it. The parrots get grumpy and don't want anything much to do with us when they're having big molts. She spent most of today out of her cage and hanging out on the (too small for her) play gym. She does look funny sitting on that. It's actually meant for budgies, but they didn't want it, so I gave it to the Quakers, who are afraid of it, so I gave it to my tiel, who does like it, but not when Maggie's sitting on it, he doesn't. LOL He has another one, too, but she likes it, too. So they take turns. She sits on one and he sits on the other, and when she wants to sit on the other, he moves over to Clyde's cage or my head.

I've figured out how to get her to go to bed at night without having to follow her all over the house while I try to convince her to go to bed. I give her her supper when I clean cages in the evening and, being a pig in a pigeon suit, she gobbles it all up and flings it all over the house. When it's bedtime, I give her another snack, and put it in her cage, and she goes in after it, and I quietly shut the door behind her. She's also begun cooing more now. Freddie (my tiel) loves to fly around and around and she was sitting on the play gym he likes to land on, and he flew toward it and veered off when he saw her sitting there, and she cooed at him. He landed on the budgies' cage (next to his, where she was) and she cooed again. So I cooed at her (my Pigeonese needs some work, LOL) and she cooed back at me.