How to Treat Feather Plucking in Conures

If your conure is plucking its feathers, your first step should be to take it to the vet. If a medical or dietary condition is not the cause, find ways to adjust your conure’s environment to reduce its stress. Provide more opportunities for stimulation by offering your bird toys and talking to it more often. If possible, introduce another conure to your bird’s cage so it has some stimulation when you’re not around.

Method 1
Method 1 of 4:

Managing Your Bird’s Health

  1. Feather-plucking is often a product of unseen medical issues. For instance, your conure might have a hormone imbalance, a disease, or a bacterial infection. Only a trained veterinarian can diagnose and solve these problems, so take your bird to your vet as soon as you detect feather plucking. [1]
    • Conditions that can cause feather plucking include: overactive thyroid glands, Addison's disease, allergies, mites, and infections. [2]
    • These various medical conditions all have unique treatment plans. Follow your vet’s recommendations to cure your conure and thereby reduce its feather plucking.
  2. To remain healthy, your conure needs a balanced diet, with adequate levels of zinc, selenium, manganese, magnesium, and other vitamins and minerals. Too much or too little fat could also cause your conure to engage in feather plucking. [3] After running your conure’s bloodwork, your vet will inform you of any dietary imbalances. Follow their advice regarding how to balance your conure’s diet. [4]
    • The levels of each dietary element your conure needs depends on its age and weight. Talk to your vet about how you can provide your conure with a balanced diet.
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  3. 3
    Provide your bird with a variety of food. If your conure is given the same fare day in and day out, it could become bored with its food. Provide your conure with foods that requires some effort and time to eat, such as string beans, macaroni and cheese, snow peas, and nuts. Offer your conure a diverse diet with foods of different shapes and sizes to maximize variety.[Image:Treat Feather Plucking in Conures Step 3 Version 2.jpg|center]]
  4. Using a small spray bottle filled with water, mist your conure a few times daily. This will encourage it to engage in normal, healthy preening behavior instead of plucking. [5]
    • During preening, your bird will remove debris, break up feathers that grow close to the skin, and waterproof its feathers using natural oils.
    • Preening behavior is an instinctive response to getting wet. Since feathers are very important for birds’ overall health and survival, the drive to waterproof their feathers kicks in when they get wet.
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Method 2
Method 2 of 4:

Reducing Stress

  1. If you have a cat or dog in your house, its presence might alarm your conure. Close the door to your conure’s room in order to prevent it from coming into contact with other animals. Even other birds caged nearby can be a source of stress for your conure, especially if the other bird is of the opposite sex. Remove other pets to a location where the conure can neither see nor hear them. [6]
    • Barking dogs, especially, can trigger your conure’s fight-or-flight response. Without a way to escape its cage, however, your conure will turn that nervous energy toward feather plucking.
  2. Noisy children, loud music, and other disruptive sounds can cause your conure to stress out. Try to keep these irritating sounds to a minimum and direct them away from your feather-plucking conure. [7]
  3. Sometimes moving your conure from an empty room to a room with a view outdoors can lead to a reduction in feather plucking. Alternately, moving a conure that has long been housed in a busy and well-trod area of the house to a more secluded room could do it good. The change in environment might help your conure reduce its stress levels and feather plucking.
  4. Feather picking can sometimes be caused by a lack of adequate sleep. When it’s time for your conure to sleep, turn off the lights in its room. Place a cover over its cage to block light more completely. Keep the noise levels down during the night. [8]
  5. Some conures simply cannot endure the stress of captivity, and will continue to engage in feather plucking as long as they are caged. If treatments do not work, you should consider returning your conure to its natural habitat.
    • Since conures comprise over 2 dozen unique species, it is impossible to provide a full list of where each should be released. Talk to your vet or your local ornithological society about options for returning your conure to the wild.
    • Wild birds never engage in feather plucking. [9]
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Method 3
Method 3 of 4:

Providing Stimulation

  1. Toys are a welcome distraction for the feather plucking conure. Offer a variety of toys, including mirrors, hard rubber chew toys, chains, bells, and rawhide or hardwood pieces. The toys should be durable and appropriate for your conure’s size, so don’t give a small, young conure a toy that is too large for it to move or interact with.
    • Bird toys are readily obtained online or at your local pet store.
  2. Introducing some decor to your conure’s cage can discourage it from engaging in feather plucking. For instance, you might add some pine cones or non-toxic plants and branches (eucalyptus, for instance). Ensure that these plants and pine cones are free of biocides.
    • Giving your bird some visual/environmental variety will help it feel less bored.
  3. Sometimes, instead of adding new elements to your conure’s cage, you can simply change the arrangement of existing elements. For instance, if your bird’s perch is vertically adjustable, move it to a higher or lower position. Move a plant that was in the center of the cage to the corner. These and similar approaches to redecorating your bird’s cage may improve its feather plucking habit. [10]
  4. Birds often engage in feather plucking as a form of self-stimulation to ward off boredom. To treat the feather plucking behavior, spend more time talking to your bird, petting it, and playing with it.
    • Take your bird outside of its cage for a few hours so it can make short flights around its room.
    • Pet your bird gently by rubbing from its head toward its tail.
    • Many birds also like having their cheeks rubbed gently in small, circular motions.
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Method 4
Method 4 of 4:

Providing a Companion

  1. Your conures will be more likely to get along if the second one is close in age to your primary bird. The two birds should, additionally, be unrelated. Meeting these criteria increases the odds of a positive bonding and decreases the likelihood of aggression. [11]
    • You can provide your conure with a cage-mate of the same or different sex, but be prepared for baby conures if you house 2 conures of different sexes.
  2. When expanding your bird family, don’t place the new bird directly in your primary bird’s cage. Instead, keep the bird in its own cage in a separate room for at least 45 days. During this quarantine period, monitor the bird for health issues. [12]
  3. If the 45-day period elapses without the new bird developing any health issues, move the new bird’s cage into the room where your primary conure lives. Place the cages side by side so the 2 birds can interact with each other. [13]
  4. After a few days, move 1 bird into the other’s cage. Allow the birds to play and interact with each other. Monitor the interaction closely and remove them back to their separate cages if they begin pecking or screaming at each other. End the visit after 20 minutes or so. [14]
    • Continue in this way for a few days or weeks, extending the length of these “visits” each time.
  5. While your conures are visiting in a single cage, watch their behavior closely. If the conures bond, they will bob their heads rapidly up and down at each other, chirp together, preen each other, and eat at the same time. [15]
    • It may take a few days or a few weeks for your conures to bond. Some conures may never bond.
  6. Once your conures have bonded, they will be ready to reside together in a single cage. A single conure requires a cage with dimensions 24″ wide x 24″ deep x 30″ high (61 cm x 61 cm x 76 cm), so 2 conures should be housed in a cage at least twice as large. [16]
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      Tips

      • Do not attempt to treat your conure’s feather plucking by tranquilizing it, spraying its feathers with foul-tasting sprays, grinding its beak, or affixing a collar about its neck. These treat only the symptoms of plucking rather than their cause. [17]
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      References

      1. ↑ http://www.mickaboo.org/resources/feather-plucking
      2. ↑ http://www.melbournebirdvet.com/feather-plucking-in-parrots.aspx
      3. ↑ http://www.theparrotsocietyuk.org/veterinary-advice/feather-plucking-in-parrots
      4. ↑ https://www.beautyofbirds.com/featherplucking.html
      5. ↑ http://www.multiscope.com/hotspot/articles/featherpicking.htm
      6. ↑ http://www.multiscope.com/hotspot/articles/featherpicking.htm
      7. ↑ http://www.theparrotsocietyuk.org/veterinary-advice/feather-plucking-in-parrots
      8. ↑ http://www.multiscope.com/hotspot/articles/featherpicking.htm
      9. ↑ http://www.theparrotsocietyuk.org/veterinary-advice/feather-plucking-in-parrots
      1. ↑ http://www.multiscope.com/hotspot/articles/featherpicking.htm
      2. ↑ http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww24evi.htm
      3. ↑ http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww24evi.htm
      4. ↑ http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww24evi.htm
      5. ↑ http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww24evi.htm
      6. ↑ http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww24evi.htm
      7. ↑ https://www.earthsfriends.com/jenday-conure/
      8. ↑ http://www.multiscope.com/hotspot/articles/featherpicking.htm

      About this article

      Article Summary X

      If your conure is plucking its feathers, take it to the vet for a check-up. Feather-plucking may be a sign that your conure has an underlying condition, such as a hormone imbalance, a disease, or a bacterial infection. The plucking might also be caused by stress, so make sure your bird has a place in your house away from other pets and loud noises where it can feel safe. If your bird is bored or under stimulated, it might be more likely to pluck its feathers, so keep it entertained by providing it with a variety of toys, including mirrors, hard rubber chew toys, chains, bells, and rawhide to chew on. For more tips from our Veterinary co-author, like how to choose a companion for your bird, keep reading!

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      • Bernadette Kisselback

        Oct 28, 2018

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