2010 June

I’ve just had a phone call from my vet, the Psittacosis test result was negative! I also had a chat with him about Lady’s preen gland, he says if it was blocked, it would would be easily unblocked with a gentle squeeze of the gland. He thinks it is more likely not working due to her previous diet, so hopefully now that she is on pellets, and Avix Booster, it will sort itself in time.

Lady is really coming out of her shell now, even giving a cheeky bite if she doesn’t get what she wants. She is talking more, and I just walked into where she is, to catch her singing!

It’s now time to work on intergrating her with my Amazon, they are very similar in charactor so fingers crossed, they should get along well.

I have spent the past week observing Lady’s plucking. It is very upsetting to watch, especially when she screams in pain! My first thought, is that she does not want to put herself through pain, why would she want to do that? So whilest watching her pluck, with tears streaming down my face, a light bulb switch on in my head!

When Lady plucks, she takes the plucked feather in her foot, and licks the oil off the end, then preens her other feathers! She was preening today, so I thought that I would examine her preen gland. Her preen gland is very dry, which tells me it could be blocked. This could be why, she is taking the oil off the end of hr plucked feathers!

I have given Lady a warm compress, and massaged the gland. I will continue to do this over the next few days to see if I can unblock it. The preen gland could be blocked for a number of reasons, poor diet which Lady was on before, vitamin deficiency, infection etc, but I will have a chat my avian vet next week.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I am right on this, but I must admit the evidence so far, points to a blocked preen gland!

Last week, whenever I sprayed or showered Lady, she became very stressed. I had been using soother on her to soothe her skin because of her plucking, but she hated it. I made the decision to stop the showering and spraying and wait until Lady had settled in more, or until she gave me a sign that she wanted a spray or shower. Lady’s last shower was last Thursday, which was to rinse off any build up of soother from her feathers and skin.
Well today, whilst hoovering the kitchen, I looked over at Lady, and there she was splashing about in her water bowl, so I ran up the stairs to grab the spray bottle! She loved it!!!!!

She was head banging, bum shuffling, flapping her wings and strutting her stuff!

Here are some pics of afterwards.