poochbabe

Here is the other photo...

I have owned Ganesha for more like 2 1/4 months and she came to me from a breeder who was going to put her in sanctuary because she could no longer be sold. She was sold at 7 mos. and was wing trimmed at the time of sale. Apparently the new owners returned her five days later in this condition. I took her at almost 11 months after I lost my 10 year old Grey and all my 'tiels to a toxic oven liner. I have been working with her to try to turn this around but I am concerned that she is getting worse not better. My vet is great with her and she is extremely knowledgeable with plucking. We have talked about anti stress drugs and a collar because she will not let the new growth come in unharmed. She had several tail feathers still in the shealths and just wrecked them over about 3 days until they were blood feathers that had to be removed. She just turned one on Friday of last week. I have attached a photo I took tonight and a fuzzy one from before they had to pull the tail. She was tested for everything at her first baby visit and we were back a few weeks ago. I got some pain medication in case the new growth was bothering her too much because she seems like it could be painful. She will suddenly wrench her body around to her back or tail almost like a spasm with her neck craning out and a little cry. I get the meds into her when she will accept it and when it seems really bad. She seems worse first in the morning and later at night.

So now three months into our relationship Ganesha is worse than ever on the plucking front. She has NO tail feathers because I had to take her into emergency when she messed with them and they started to bleed. They all had to be pulled. She is ferociously working on her right wing and she has NO flight feathers. The one that was coming in was worked down to a spike and now a nub. I give her a full soaking shower everyday and spray her with aloe vera juice. She is on Harrisons and fresh fruit and veggies. She has tons of out of cage time and more toys than I ever had as a child. She is so wonderful and sweet and loving but she is a mess when it comes to her back end. I try to ignore it whenever she goes after the feathers but now I am also trying to distract her with other things and noises, like a can with pennies (I read that somewhere as a techique). My vet is great and a full avian vet who does all the work for the avian rescue here in Milwaukee. I have followed her advice and everyone else's since I brought her home and she is getting worse...HELP! P.S. She was DNA'd to be a girl...;-)

Blood feathers may mostly occur in the wings but if a bird is a really bad plucker, the tail is also vulnerable. Ganesha has been struggling to get past this butt, tail, wings plucking frenzy and last night she went after the new blood feather that was just starting to emerge from the shaft. It started to bleed as did the other two small ones underneath and I had to rush her to emergency vet services at 11 pm last night. When we finally were able to go home at 2 am she was minus all the new blood feathers. This is so distressing. Does anyone have any advice? They gave me an e-collar but I don't want to stress her even more by making it uncomfortable for her to eat, drink and move around at this young age, just turning a year old. Could this be a really bad molt gone worse?

Ganesha has been on a total plucking tear lately and she yanked on her little red shoot that was starting to be a butt feather and it started to bleed. I got out the quick stop and some corn starch and it has stopped now but what can I do to stop her from doing this again while am away during my work hours? Should I be worried? She is just turning a year old and has been awful this past week. I thought it was getting under control but we went to stay at my boyfriends on Saturday night/Sunday day where she has a second cage and she just freaked out and tore up all the white fuzzy she had started to grow back in and ripped through half of a new flight feather then started to take the tail feather shaft out little by little. Now the bleeding! What can I do?

Oh, I need some help here. My new little Ganesha is plucking out so much I can hardly stand to just walk away. I just found out she is clear of all diseases including beak and feather and is actually A GIRL...but she just goes into these frenzies where she won't stop ripping out her butt feathers and her back feather around the right side of her butt. She actually turns herself backwards in almost angry arch and rips. I am trying to ignore it and walk away but sometimes it looks so painful I have to spray her down right away with aloe vera. I have been getting her totally wet every day with a shower and the aloe. The vet gave me some pain medication for the one blood feather she is growing in at her tail but it is a struggle to get it into her mouth. It seems like she does it everytime I leave her alone in a room, even for just a few minutes. HELP!

Hello Nesha. I call my Grey Nesha for short as his name is Ganesha, the little Hindu Elephant Boy God. He would scream like he was being murdered when I first tried the spray bottle or putting him in the tub and pouring water over him (but he was better with the tub than the spray) and his is a terrible plucker so I have to bathe him often to try and soothe the raw skin on his butt and back. I recently was letting him watch me in the shower from a safe distance on the handle of his basket and he started to reach over to get to me in the tub, so I just picked him up on my finger and took him into the spray with me. I made sure it was not the full force but now he is starting to open his beak to catch the spray and open his wings to take more in. I think as long as I am holding him he is not so crazy scared of the water and doesn't scream at all. He actually seems to like it some. My vet started him on this spray called Avi soother spray which is Aloe Vera and ammonia which has really made a difference in his plucking.

Both my previous Grey who died in Feb. and my new baby Grey seem to like Salmon a lot. Ruben loved it and Ganesha is just starting to try new foods. When I adopted him he was only on a pellet diet and I have started to introduce lots of new and interesting things to him. He loves fresh steamed artichoke as did Ruben before him. She had figured out how to scrape the meat off the leaf just like a person. I did try some fresh tuna steak with Ganesha and he seemed to like it okay but much prefers veggies and nuts to meat, although steak was a huge hit the first time he tried it. He does like chicken but I feel like it is a bit cannibalistic to feed it to him...:-)

I am not sure but Ganesha is really large and lighter in color, but he has no wings so it is hard to tell...still plucking a lot but he has a few tail shoots coming in and I am hoping they will stay put.

Thanks for the advice. I don't push the issue with him and he is improving some but he just doesn't seem to grab on like my older Grey did. I guess that is developed over time and usage. He will climb up the hard wood A frame stand I have in my living room which has narrow dowels at various heights on the way up, even though it is higher than anything in or on his cage but won't step over to the smooth natural branch perch I added to the side of the stand to give him an additional foothold. He seems unsure of surfaces and thickness. He is not much of a shoulder sitter either. Thanks for the website. I will look into that. My older Grey used to perch on a wicker basket handle but this little guy more often wants to shred it instead. He is learning to ride on the basket in the car and at my yoga studio on his stand, then all of a sudden he just tears it to shreds. It is fun learning to raise a young Grey. I got Rubes when she was already five so this is my first experience with a baby. I never realized that you have to teach them all that from the start.

Hello all. I really appreciate all the wonderful support and advice I have received on this site. You guys got me through the terrible loss of my Rubes and have helped me so much already with the new little guy, Ganesha. "Nesh" doesn't have any tail or side wings so his balance is pretty off most of the time. He seems very reluctant to climb up onto anything that is not completely stable and round to the foot. If something has any kind of sway, like the rope climb in my tub so he can shower with me, or something too smooth like manzanita branches, he is unfortable and complains when I try to have him step up to those things or won't leave my hand at all. He also has the biggest feet I have ever seen in a Grey. His toes are so long I had to change all the perches to be really large branches or wide poles for him to be comfortable. Do you think he will get better with stepping up to different surfaces over time? His is going on a year old we think in April.

As some of your know I rescued a young grey a few weeks ago after my beloved Ruben died of fumes from an oven liner which became degraded and burned while I was cooking dinner. My new Grey is wonderful, funny, smart and is already talking and bonding well with me. His name is Ganesha or "Nesh" for short. I have posted some pix and he is now my profile picture. The reason he was available for rescue at only 10 mos. old was that he had been sold and was returned to the breeder five days later with his tail and wings completely gone. He had shredded his feathers right down to the bare skin on his right side and his little nub of a butt was complete bare and raw. I have been working on increasing the humidity in my house, went to WalMart and got aloe vera juice and spray him daily and I have changed his diet to Harrisons pellets at the advice of my avian vet plus adding red palm oil to his food also at her advice. He has been checked for all biological reasons and none were found. One thing I noticed right away is that he doesn't like to play with toys and is actually a bit afraid of them, especially hanging toys. I have started to stuff toys with almonds and sugar snap peas, his faves and put them in foraging bags and small wicker baskets at the bottom of the cage. I got him a few foot toys and he loves to chew up milk bottle caps but he is still working on his back end and wings quite often. Two questions: The vet and some of the literature I have read says to ignore him when he picks or walk out of the room rather than spray him then or scold him in the moment so as not to reinforce the attention getting aspect of his behavior. Do you agree with this approach? Any additional suggestions for helping him to learn how to play? I think he is too young to not be able to get past this picking thing. Am I being too optimistic about it?

My Rubes used to go everywhere with me in her PetPocket carrier. She particularly like Target because she liked to immitate the scanner just minutes before the clerk was about to scan. She was hard to see inside the pack and the clerk would start to put items in the bag and I would have to tell them that it didn't scan and explain. Then all the clerks would come over and visit with her. She also rode on my motorcycle in that pack and went hiking. I should note that she was a wing plucker and had NO flight feathers ever so I wasn't afraid she would fly off or anything and I always had the pack zipped and secured on my body like a backpack in the front when on the cycle. She also rode in the car in the passenger seat on the handle of a naked wicker basket that I seat belted in. She would look into the cars next to me at lights and say hello. Freaked people out! I miss her but Ganesha is coming along nicely and hopefully he will enjoy some of those things as well.

Thanks, guys. I will take the walnut out and put plain papar instead. I appreciate all the great advice. I wish I had known about this site before now. I made many mistakes for the past 12 years with my birds and maybe Rubes would still be with me if I had known about you before. M

I have always used ground walnut shells as a litter at the bottom of my cockatiel and Grey cages. My Grey cage has a top tray as well and my baby girl, Ruben, never tried to eat the stuff but my new baby was up on the top today munching a bit on it. Any danger??? Marietta

Hello all...I am in day two of Ganesh coming home and he has already figured out that when I walk out of the room for two seconds he starts to rip at the tiny little spike of a tail he has left or at the raggy wings caps. Any suggestions? I want to stop him and have been spritzing him with plain water but I don't want to stress him out more than necessary in his first few days here with me. He came to me with a completely bald butt and just the tops of his wings...all else is GONE. Could he really have figured out that it is a great way to get my attention???

To answer you question, an oven liner is a sheet that you can buy or in my case get as a gift that goes in the bottom of your oven to catch the spills and drips so they don't burn onto the bottom of the oven surface. It is supposed to be safer and cut down the indicence of oven fires. I got one the Xmas before last and have had it in the oven for all this time. Apparently they can get compromised and burn at any time and are made with PTFEs, which is the toxic component in teflon. How I wish that I had know that now or that the company had posted some kind of warning on their package and/or website...

What I read about eye shape is the males have a small black triangle in the inner corner and the females do not. I have also read that the females have some silvery lines in the underside of the tail feather and the males are completely red.

Thanks Judy. I realized that the only photo I have available of the new kid is on my computer at work. I will transfer it tomorrow and post it. "Nesh" is already totally comfortable with being in the living room on the stand and watching tv with me. Last night I left him in his cage and spent some time in that room just being with him. I put a small tv in the room and a cd player with a cd of bird songs. He has been in a bird shop all his life and I thought he wouldn't feel so lost and lonely when I was gone to work for a few hours. I also put some long door mirrors up on two sides of the cage against the walls so he can see other Greys like he is used to. Tonight we have just been hanging out and he is sitting with one foot up and his eyes closed next to the couch even with my dogs sitting with me on the couch. He just seems so easy going for a new baby. he makes me smile...I will always miss my Rubes but he is helping to heal my heart.

Is everyone sure that there are NO PFTEs in the Green cookware? I just saw them in Target and thought about adding some, at least frying pans for eggs, but after losing all my birds to a PTFE incident I am so freaked out by anything that says non stick. I just rescued a 9 mo. old Grey and I would die myself if anything happened to him/her.

Hello all. Two weeks ago my beloved Grey and all my cockatiels died in a tragic PTFE accident due to a faulty oven liner that must have had some teflon like chemical in it. After cooking dinner in the oven I noticed by Ruben swoon and grabbed her quickly and rushed to animal emergency. She died in my hands on the way. I came home to find my 'tiels all dead on the bottom of their cages. Most importantly I want to make sure EVERYONE knows that ALL ALL ALL non stick products are potentially deadly to your birds. I had the liner in my oven for over a year and that last time was the time it got overheated enough to kill them in 20 minutes. The companies won't disclose that PTFE content on their packaging or their websites so DON'T trust the "safe up to 550 degrees" or some such bull. I did and I lost my best friend. I want to report that I rescued a baby Grey yesterday that had been sold to a family and they returned him five days later completely plucked out on the butt and wings. They claimed that something is "wrong with him". The breeder was going to put him in the sanctuary since no one would buy him so I offered her what the avian rescue charges for their Greys and she gladly accepted because she loves this little guy/girl and wanted to see him/her in a good home. I have named him/her Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god that is good luck and abundance. I have been sitting with him on the couch all evening and he even shared my vegetable potstickers! He is a delight and I have felt happier than I have for many weeks now. I need to try to turn the plucking around but Ruben plucked out in the same pattern for the five years I had her and the five years prior to my adopting her. She got better and then I would go away for a few days or just ignore her a bit too much and she was bald again. No matter, I am so happy to report that I am again the proud mother of a 9 mo. old Grey...

Don't take a chance with ANYTHING non-stick. I just lost my beloved African Grey and my cockatiels this past Saturday night because of an oven liner that must have become compromised over time and sent out toxic fumes and killed them in 20 minutes. Trust me on this, don't trust anything that is non-stick. I am beyond grief-stricken and just a bit guilt ridden...I should have known better! I had gotten rid of all my teflon products but this liner never occurred to me. I had it in the over for over a year without incident and in a few minutes I lost my best friend and my 15 year old tiel.