B&G feather queston

Hey there! I'm new, my full intro and story post is in the welcome forum, but I had a question about our blue and gold macaw, Harley.

All the pictures of B&Gs I see, the birds are BLUE BLUE BLUE. Well, Harley's molting pretty good right now and all his old feathers have a ton of black mottling/speckles on them. It seems like his new ones are a lot brighter. I didn't realize how dark he was until I started seeing the new ones come in! I'd heard of stress bars, is this sort of like that?

He was in a rough situation when we got him a few months ago... owned by two college boys in an apartment, only two toys to his name, fed seed and a bunch of salty junk food (His favorite treat is Cheetos they said!). And of course now he's getting Zupreem pellets and a variety of nuts and fruits and all the toys he can destroy. I know he's happier and healthier, I was just curious if this is a common thing as I googled it and didn't find much. Lookng forward to seeing him all blue!

Black bars across feathers are called stress marks. Very young birds often have some due to learning all of the things baby birds have to learn, but if there are more than a handful, it's something to be worried about.

Since Harley came from a less than ideal situation, it seems logical that he'd have lots of stress marks on his feathers. It would also be logical that he'll have a just few after this molt simply because he's in a new situation - even though it's better - and he has to learn the ropes.

I was looking at pictures of our first Alexandrine - who died only 5 days after we got her due to a congenital nuerological issue; her other 2 clutchmates died the same way at very young ages - and nearly every feather she had had a black bar across it. All because she wasn't healthy and always stressed.

Does that make sense? I'm trying to find a web article I read on this once but I'm having a hard time with that.

One more thing...if they're bars across the feathers, it's probably stess marks. If it's spots it may be something more serious - like liver disease - although according to some quick web ressearch, treatable.

Sounds like you may want to take a trip to the vet.

Yes, thank you! That's pretty much what I thought, I just found it hard to find any information on it. It would make sense that their wellbeing shows in their feathers.

Yeah, they aren't really bars across the whole feather, it's more like... almost every feather has a lot of black edging or speckling to it.

We're planning on a vet trip pretty soon anyway, I'll make sure to ask.

I want to start of with the good news...

It could be stress marks, which is very treatable as HRH said.

The bad news...It is a sign of Apergillosis, the 'silent parrot killer'. You must take little Harley to the vet. I hope he doesn't have it...