# My cockatiel's feathers...



## Jen144 (Nov 24, 2008)

My cockatiel is quite young, and when I got her her feathers were _not_ in the best of condition..far from it, especially her tail feathers. She's moulted once since I got her, and she's got some new wing feathers growing in. What I noticed about them is that the feathers seem to have bars across them..like a lot of the feather itself is kind of stripped away in bars across her wings..I don't know if that made sense..I heard somewhere that that is from stress or a digestion problem or something?? Plus, the feathers from both her tail and wings are growing, then some are just splitting..not in half, but so that the top half (on the top of her tail) splits away from the bottom half (nearest to the underside of her tail)
Obviously, her feathers aren't in very good condition..what is causing this, and how can I fix it??


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## sweetrsue (Jul 8, 2008)

It can be an indicator if disease. I would get that bird to a vet to be sure there isn't an intestinal parasite or bacterial infection. here's something I found on the NCS site re this issue: 

Close observation of the feathers and skin can sometimes give insight to the cause of poor feather appearance. For example, broken and ragged feathers could be due to improper housing, mate trauma, or delayed molt. Brittle and frazzled feathers with scaly skin is often a sign of poor nutrition. Stress marks (horizontal lines of improper feather growth) are a sign that when the feather was in the "pin" stage, the bird was ill or stressed. Retarded feather growth and retention of pin feather sheaths in young birds can be due to a dry environment. Abnormal coloration can be genetic, diet, or internal illness. This can be a common problem in cockatiels. The replacement of a white feather by a golden yellow one may indicate a problem. A low grade psittacosis infection can be one of the causes of this condition. Abnormal molts can be 
expressed by dark areas or fringes of feathers that appear bronzed and frayed. This is often a sign of illness, poor nutrition, or an imported bird to northern latitudes. If this is accompanied by puritis (itchy skin), it can indicate extreme environmental temperature fluctuations, low thyroid function or internal parasites such as giardia.
http://www.cockatiels.org/articles/care/feathers.html here's a link to the page.


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