What is molting

[jhhuhma]

Hi guys, I have used the search formum to try and find the answer to my question but there are so many pages and what I read is not exactly what I am looking for. So here goes.

 

What do you mean by full molt?, what is it, how do you know when they are molting? And at what age do you expect them to molt. I know this may sound like somthing I should already know but I do not so I would appriciate your help.

[Sallas]

Every so often birds go into a stage called molt or moult. It is where they basically lose their old feathers and new ones come in. There is mini-molts and large molts. There is not truly a full molt because if they lost all of their flight feathers, they would probably starve or get taken by a predator.

 

Greys hit their first "large" molt at about 10 months to 1 year in age.

 

You can tell because they will be "shabby" looking and you will see little "pin" feathers. (Feathers that are still bundled up in the coating, when the coating comes off the feather opens up like you are used to seeing.

[jhhuhma]

Thank you for your reply and I am wondering if we need to do anything different with them during this time, do the pin feathers hurt? Also I am seeing about 10 to 20 little, kind of fuzzy feathers around his cage not anything frequent and he looks beautiful so I have not been concerned is that just normal feather shedding? He is 6 months.

[cflanny]

They will lose thier down feathers regulary ( little white ones) What I am doing with ZZero we are in our forst "large" molt I am no expert but I bath him alot and make sure I am soaking especially the areas with pins to the skin with Aloe Vera juice. He is very itchy now and before bed I even put Aloe Vera gel on the skin around his pins. I dont think the pins hurt as much as they are a annoyance and itch.

 

They seems to molt areas at a time right now we just got done with his head a neck, been working this area for over a month now

[Dave007]

And during that molting period many people find that their birds are quieter and more moody. Petting has to be done differently because the areas where the new feathers are growing from are very tender so petting a bird in a reverse direction can cause a bird to be short tempered and a little nippy. All of this happens to many greys and with others it doesn't happen. There are other species of birds where these types of things constantly happen so a person has to be even more careful in how they deal with those types of birds.