Aggressive Preening

[Chikoo]

Sometimes my female, Chikoo, preens herself aggressively. She seems excited, and just lunges at her tail or under her wings, or at her wings. She is not pulling the feathers out, and even makes the occasional pleasant noise while doing this. She gets bathed everyday, and she was sprayed with aloe vera yesterday and today. Is this normal every now and then? She does not always preen like this, but I've noticed her preen with more intensity sometimes. I live in a Hawaii, and there is no A/C in my house, just tradewinds flowing in the house, and plenty of humidity. So there is no way her skin is dry!

 

[kc_y0]

My eccy preens aggressively too LOL I think while she's in her Hyper play mood she just decides its time to preen and is still all hyped up Lol. So I would say its normal

 

[lene1949]

It's just playing... Just like a puppy will chase his tail...

 

[Oedipussrex]

Lol
i didnt want to be the first to post on here (and cause unneeded worry) by saying that pickle does that too, sometimes even with his toys its hard to tell if hes actually angry at them or playing. XDD
must just be a thing that they do. lol

 

[mtdoramike]

You need to monitor this behavior. Eclectus do have an over preening issue. My male Ekkie has bobbed his tail off and his wing feathers looks like lace due to his aggressive over preening. My bird groomer won't even trim his wings because she see's no need to since they look more like sticks than actual feathers. He doesn't pull the feathers out either, just chews on them.

We were giving him baths every day and was spraying him with aloe juice as well. But it didn't seem to really help. So we are now letting him choose when to take a bath and cutting baths down to once a week or so because his feathers did seem to be kind of dry. So I'm thinking maybe daily baths are washing the natural oils out of his feathers. But we'll see.