Feather problem

[aquagranny]

I have 2 black-masked lovies since December. They shoud both be around one-year old now. I rescued picture-perfect 'him' (Kiwi) from the pet shop, and they deliverd 'her' (Kiki) a couple days ater directly from the breeder to my home, to avoid stressing her. Kiki was and to this day remains much tinier and more nervous than Kiwi, although both are rather wild and still vary of me, so I'll let them come to me at their own time (if that time ever comes...).
Last month Kiki started overgrooming first her tail-feathers, and when she nibbled them whole, started with her front yellow feathers. It is now very visible, looks almost like crew-cut :confused: She doesn't pluck them out, just grooms, and grooms, and groms... Kiwi is his stable calm self, picture-perfect, of course...
Since we have no specialised avian vets here (one that claims so made some horrible mistakes according to one of our forums), DNA sexing is only a dream, and since the breeders here are writing a lot of mumbo-jumbo from their personal experience that I find completely opposite from the advice found on this and other avian sites, if you know what could be wrong with Kiki, or what could I do to prevent her from balding completely, pls help with advice asap!
BTW: Kiki and Kiwi get along great, eat great, best quality mixed seeds, lots of veg, but ignore fruit, egg-meal and home-made recipes, have a big cage, that opens at the top, lots of toys that they mostly ignore, have my whole bedroom to fly as much as they want when I'm at home. Yep, and they both prefer bathing in the water-dish and completely ignore their bird-bath.

[linda040899]

Hi and welcome to our community!!!
Unfortunately, there are still a lot of areas that do not have properly trained avian vets and many vets that care for cats, dogs and other animals are clueless when it comes to creatures that have feathers!! :(

DNA sexing is actually available anywhere in the world through Avian Biotech ( http://www.avianbiotech.com ). They do DNA sexing, as well as certain other testing, internationally. You can order kits online and you pay for the tests you want done when you send them the samples you collect from your birds.

Perhaps Kiki has a medical problem or she just might need something else to preen other than her own feathering. Some of our members here offer "Shredders" (braided palm fronds) to their birds so that they have something else to chew up. You can try that and see if it helps.

Others should have more suggestions so let's see where this thread goes.

[aquagranny]

It's great being in your community!
I'm going by this forum's 'book' this past six months, as I was totally clueless about parrots.
Hopefully in time I'll find a proper vet for my two cuties, in the meantime, from time to time I'm mixing capsules of lactobaccilus with their seed for god measure, and I'll check if the samples can be sent to UK for DNA sexing, although it really doesn't matter to me, I love the little guys.
I can't remember I've seen those shredders here, but I'll check again. Kiki is shredding my old silk lampshade allright, so now it's all theirs to abuse...

[linda040899]

If you can't find "Shredders," one of our members used a wicker basket and we watched, in photos, as her lovies demolished it!!! :lol (Elle, was that you???) That might be an option for you.

For lack of DNA testing, I've found it possible to distinguish sexes between eye-ring species of lovebird (Masked, Fischer's, Black Cheeked) by eye shape. Males tend to have round eyes, while females tend to have almond shaped ones. This is how I pick birds for my own breeding, although I would never guarantee sex this way when I sell an eye-ring lovebird!

I'm not so sure I would allow Kiki to shred a silk lampshade, mostly because of the material. Should she swallow some of it, I'm not sure she could digest it. We had a member here who lost a lovebird hen because she swallowed some fabric used for nesting material and it clogged intestines. There was nothing that could be done to save her........ :cry:

[salderm1]

I don't know if this helps or not, but I read on this sight that someonr else had a problem with feather picking and (it was a serious problem) was that they changed the water to filtered???? Just my input from reading past posts......

[aquagranny]

Thanks for all the good ideas. I'm switching to bottled water immediately for them, maybe Kiki is more sensitive. Would that be OK? I already had second thoughts about chlorine in our tap water, but other than that, it is of excellent quality.
Wicker sounds great, at least it's easilly accessible. I thought that silk might be safe since it's natural fiber, and they started shredding it the second they landed the first time.
I'll post pics as soon as I figure out how work that all out, plus upload... I've seen the eye-shape post before, as well as the pics, but just can't figure it out for my guys.

[Elle]

My lovebirds gets so busy with these that they don't have time to get into trouble. The only thing to be careful is it may intice a female to lay eggies.

http://www.lovebirdsplus.com/community/showthread.php?t=5151