Birds feathers!

[Sapphire]

Here is a great site that tells you everything about our birds feathers

    http://www.2ndchance.info/molt.htm

[Sondra]

I have found that extreme weather changes contribute to a molt. For example, when it's spring and we have had cold winter type days with temps in the 20 to mid 30 degree range and it warms up into the 50s and 60sand close to 70 our birds molt, same happens in the fall. This will also happen if temps have stabilized in the 70s and we take a dip back into the 40s and 50s.

Some thing the author of the article didn't discuss was stress barrs in feathers. Stress barrs occur in birds who have been under emotional upheaval or during times of sickness. They usually appear as black lines in the feathers, most noticeably on the flight feathers and tail feathers. When a bird first starts to pluck they will have stress barrs in their feathers.

 

[Sapphire]

Thank you Sondra! A good piece of advice for members!

[steptoe91(tozie)]

how interesting... and timely. for some reason skittles is in a mega-molt.  poor guy looks like one of those goodwill plushies from the bottom of the toy bin   

i've heard some people suggest the possibility of the unusual huge abundance of food being available year round as a cause for the large loss of feathers that we are currently dealing with here. 

hard to say, but definitely something to consider