LilianNightshade
New member
Hello, I recently came upon a baffling aspect of my parrot I can't find an answer for and hoped someone in this forum could clear it up.
It's a long story, but I feel like this context is very important for my question: my parents and I recently took in an amazon parrot called Loro after my aunt, his owner, died. He is 40 years old and originally belonged to my grandma, who treated him like her own son and spoiled him rotten. She loved him to death and Loro couldn't ask for a better owner. When she died, however, my aunt took him in... and unfortunately my aunt wasn't a stable person. She suffered from bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses, and therefore even though Loro belonged to her mom, she didn't treat him well at all. She often had anger fits and would repeatedly beat Loro or his cage to shut him up, with age and the beginnings of Alzheimer she also constantly left his cage alone in a shady room with no sunlight or fresh air for days. Her caretakers were no better, because they only fed Loro bread and sunflower seeds and beat him up as well. This situation went on for 15 years.
Last year my father went over to my aunt's house to take care of her now that she was very ill and weak. He found Loro in a cramped, rusty cage falling apart with age. Hell there was even a pile of poop accumulate at the cage floor, and it had been sitting there for so long that the uric acid ate away the metal floor and left a big hole when it was cleaned up. His state was beyond terrible, and thus my father started giving Loro a decent life again by constantly taking him out, feeding him a diet full of varied fruits and seeds, buying a new spacious cage for him and overall treating him with dignity. My aunt unfortunately died months later, and we brought Loro to our house so he is part of the family now.
After his 15 years of abuse and terrible diet Loro's plumage was still recovering by then, in fact he went through a really intense molting when he arrived here. Because of this I never really thought much of his naked wings... until now. He has been over his molting for a while now and when he stretched his wings last night I noticed not a single flight feather had grown. This rose many red flags in my head. I asked my mother about it and she showed me footage from back at my aunt's home, when Loro was enjoying the rain and flapping his wings. I realized that they looked just as naked back then, and that was over seven months ago! I can't help but feel concerned, specially because a friend of mine recently lost a budgie to an unknown illness that made his organism so weak he couldn't even grow his wing feathers back.
Also I must point this out: Loro is NOT a legalized parrot. I live in Brazil, and my grandma got him at some road in the countryside way back when the inspection of illegal exotic animal trade was terribly poor. Therefore I suspect his handler did something to his wings to prevent the feathers from growing. At first I thought pinioning, but as you can clearly see in the following videos(sorry for the poor quality, recorded it in my crappy phone), his metacarpal bones are still intact:
[ame="https://youtu.be/abrg98CrKuM"]Parrot War Dance - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="https://youtu.be/zONJVo6JXvM"]LoroChuva - YouTube[/ame]
After asking my bird expert friend, he confirmed he wasn't pinioned and that his coverts were all there, and even added "it's almost like someone ripped out all his primaries and most of his secondaries right out the sockets".
So now I'd really puzzled. Even if it isn't a sign of illness caused by his abused past, I really would like to know what made his wings look like that. I did lots of research on different methods of permanent flight limitation and found nothing, and I can't help but feel like Loro was put through something absolutely terrifying when he was little... I shudder just from thinking about it. If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate the input.
It's a long story, but I feel like this context is very important for my question: my parents and I recently took in an amazon parrot called Loro after my aunt, his owner, died. He is 40 years old and originally belonged to my grandma, who treated him like her own son and spoiled him rotten. She loved him to death and Loro couldn't ask for a better owner. When she died, however, my aunt took him in... and unfortunately my aunt wasn't a stable person. She suffered from bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses, and therefore even though Loro belonged to her mom, she didn't treat him well at all. She often had anger fits and would repeatedly beat Loro or his cage to shut him up, with age and the beginnings of Alzheimer she also constantly left his cage alone in a shady room with no sunlight or fresh air for days. Her caretakers were no better, because they only fed Loro bread and sunflower seeds and beat him up as well. This situation went on for 15 years.
Last year my father went over to my aunt's house to take care of her now that she was very ill and weak. He found Loro in a cramped, rusty cage falling apart with age. Hell there was even a pile of poop accumulate at the cage floor, and it had been sitting there for so long that the uric acid ate away the metal floor and left a big hole when it was cleaned up. His state was beyond terrible, and thus my father started giving Loro a decent life again by constantly taking him out, feeding him a diet full of varied fruits and seeds, buying a new spacious cage for him and overall treating him with dignity. My aunt unfortunately died months later, and we brought Loro to our house so he is part of the family now.
After his 15 years of abuse and terrible diet Loro's plumage was still recovering by then, in fact he went through a really intense molting when he arrived here. Because of this I never really thought much of his naked wings... until now. He has been over his molting for a while now and when he stretched his wings last night I noticed not a single flight feather had grown. This rose many red flags in my head. I asked my mother about it and she showed me footage from back at my aunt's home, when Loro was enjoying the rain and flapping his wings. I realized that they looked just as naked back then, and that was over seven months ago! I can't help but feel concerned, specially because a friend of mine recently lost a budgie to an unknown illness that made his organism so weak he couldn't even grow his wing feathers back.
Also I must point this out: Loro is NOT a legalized parrot. I live in Brazil, and my grandma got him at some road in the countryside way back when the inspection of illegal exotic animal trade was terribly poor. Therefore I suspect his handler did something to his wings to prevent the feathers from growing. At first I thought pinioning, but as you can clearly see in the following videos(sorry for the poor quality, recorded it in my crappy phone), his metacarpal bones are still intact:
[ame="https://youtu.be/abrg98CrKuM"]Parrot War Dance - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="https://youtu.be/zONJVo6JXvM"]LoroChuva - YouTube[/ame]
After asking my bird expert friend, he confirmed he wasn't pinioned and that his coverts were all there, and even added "it's almost like someone ripped out all his primaries and most of his secondaries right out the sockets".
So now I'd really puzzled. Even if it isn't a sign of illness caused by his abused past, I really would like to know what made his wings look like that. I did lots of research on different methods of permanent flight limitation and found nothing, and I can't help but feel like Loro was put through something absolutely terrifying when he was little... I shudder just from thinking about it. If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate the input.