Tina saw the vet yesterday

[Peeker]

and everything was fine. Her blood work was good. Her weight and body condition great. She had her beak dremeled and polished.

Over the last year she hasn't been beak grinding much. I think she chipped the lower beak originally climbing around her cage and it felt weird to grind it. By the time I had noticed it, the lower beak was badly overgrown. I dremeled it myself a few times to get it to a better length, but was hesitant to go too far. As a consequence of not beak grinding the upper beak had thickened too. She has recently started grinding again but I wanted the vet to have a look at it. He was not concerned but shortened it a bit and cleaned it up.

She also has some feather loss over her eye and that has been a fairly consistant problem ever since I got her 10 years ago. The feathers come back in when she molts but she uses her foot to scratch around her eyes. She is more persistant about it on one side. She was looked at originally and found to be healthy, but I mentioned it again in hopes he would have some new ideas. The vet said to try and distract her with more shredding toys and such.

Here's a pic showing the feather loss and her new cuter beak.

 

[sodakat]

Has the vet ever done a skin culture on that area? I don't know anything, just wondering.

Have you noticed that it's worse this time of year? Sully has some grey spots on his head right now and it was the same the last two years. By June his head will look normal.

 

[Peeker]

I honestly can't remember if he did a culture way back when but I think he did. He asked me if I see her rubbing it on perches and I see her scratch with her foot. The area sometimes looks a little dry, but never swollen, red, scaly or anything.

I'll be curious about the allergy thread and hope _ad_ will ring in when she gets her bird about the balding around the eye and allergy issue. My vet has never mentioned allergies but I have no idea how they would test for that.