Browning Feather Tips?

[baron1282]

I am just wondering if I need to be concerned about this? My bird has had some browning on his feathers at the tips.

Do I need to get him more Sun Light, or is this normal? I have two pictures, one shows him without the browning and the other shows him a few weeks later with it.

Thanks for the help!

P.S. The blue on his neck is due to a toy dying his feathers there while we were misting him.

 

[kellie]

How old is your bird? It could be just his feathers maturing? I don't have a GCC, I have a sun, but I know as he has gotten older he has gotten more yellow and red and less green. Maybe the GCC colors do something similar?

 

[Featheredsamurai]

Are they old feathers? New feathers are brightly colored and as they age they usually dull out some. My friend peregrine falcon is always covered in beautiful slate grey feathers and a bunch of sun bleached dark grey brown feathers.

 

[baron1282]

As of now he is a year and 4 months old.

 

[Echo]

No his feathers shouldn't look like that. None of mine have ever shown this. It might be a deficiency in his diet / lack of sun light.

Doesn't look like stress bars and I doubt it would be feather bronzing either.

 

[baron1282]

Hmmm, I feed him black berries and other fruits. He loves black berries!!
This is the normal food I have him on.
Kaytee Fiesta MAX Bird Food for Parrots - Parrot Food and Bird Seed from petco.com

I give him this often.

Kaytee Fiesta Healthy Toppings Bird Treats at PETCO

I also give him these often. At least once a week!

eCOTRITION Tropical Fruit & Honey Flavor Treat Sticks for Parrots & Conures at PETCO

I am going with lack of sun. I live in a basement and we don't have a flight harness yet. We do take him outside in his cage with us, but not for long because he hates his little carrying cage.

We don't make much money, but its on our list of things we are saving for. Plus we are going to get him a UV lamp on a timer. Plus a heating perch for when winter comes. The flight harness will be coming next week a long with the UV lamp!

 

[Echo]

It's seem like a combination of lack of natural sunlight and poor diet.
I don't consider Kaytee a quality seed mix, the "healthy toppings" are sugar as well as the seed sticks. So he gets seeds and sugar as his main diet. Fresh berries are great but he needs a variety of fruits.

The MAIN diet should be fresh food: veggies, grain, beans, sprouts. The seeds should be no more than 1/4 cup every other day. Healthy pellets such as Zupreem/ Hagen/Harrison/ should also be available.

 

[kiwiS]

The same thing is happening to Kiwi. SHe is on Harrison's and Roudybush and gets a veggie mix consisting of kale, broccoli, jalapeno, carrots, some fruits twice a day for breakfast and dinner. She also has sweet potato, pasta, rice, squash. Her cage is by the window and has sunlight all day

I have a feeling if it's a diet thing it could be left over from her previous diet (I've only had her a month) and that hopefully with her current molting season, she will grow out some brighter, healthier plumage! She was eating some sort of generic pet store mix when I first got her..it was all chunky, with lots of seeds and looked unhealthy. I weaned her off of that stuff real quick, and within a week she was downing her veggies and harrisons.

 

[baron1282]

Thanks, I will look at changing the diet for him.

 

[Pajarita]

Yes, you definitely need to change the diet. For one thing, GCCs are mainly fructivores so they need to eat A LOT of fresh fruit (and they love it!). For another, it's OK to feed seeds to them as long as it's a small and measured amount but the mix you are getting is way too high in protein (it's for parrots and it needs to be a budgie mix with no peanuts, no sunflowers, and more cereal grains than oil seeds). No seed treats whatsoever and the 'toppings' are nothing but dry papaya with artificial colors and sulfites (very bad for them). Don't believe anything bird food manufacturers tell you, they just want you to buy stuff even if it's not good for the bird.

Mine eat cooked cereal grains (wheat, barley, oats, brown rice and kamut) mixed with veggies, a big piece of fruit (about half an apple), a small piece of veggie (they are not big on veggies but they do love corn on the cob, cherry tomatoes, baked sweet potatoes and baby peas so they get more of these) and a leafy green for breakfast and, for dinner, they get a single level tablespoon of a budgie mix.

 

[baron1282]

We always give him apple. He loves apples and Black Berries. He goes nuts over Black Berries.

So we do have fruit down! As he gets them every single day. I will cut back on seeds, but I don't think I can stop him from eating sun flower seeds all together as he LOVES them. So I will give him some sparingly!

Thanks for all the advice, I will move forward now and feed him more veggies.

 

[MonicaMc]

That's known as feather bronzing... could be diet, too much handling/petting, over-grooming, playing rough, etc.

WellVet.com - FeatherGroomingDisorders


Essentially, it's the pigment of the feathers getting rubbed off, causing a "bronzing" effect.



As long as the feathers molt out healthy and the bird *is* healthy, I wouldn't be too concerned about it.