#feather plucking

[laurawitchart]

On to week two of #mayvian; distress.

This takes place right after Mitsi died and Vic isn't taking it well.

[zettelkaestchen]

he has more than just these

Aww! He's such a stylish and exalted little gentleman! 😍 What's his name?

Thanks for sending all these cute photos. :)

Disclaimer: The collars are not a fashion accessory but instead a health aid to prevent him from plucking on his feathers as you explained in the comments. Don't make your bird (or other pet) wear clothes and stuff when it's not necessary.

[what-is-love-babey-dont-hurt-me]

>> “And those wings aren’t the only thing you’ve been neglecting, are they?”

Fun fact! The blue bellied roller, which is the bird Patton’s wings are based off of, have a diet that includes snakes! I didn’t know when I started this, it’s a bit ironic. I almost didn’t post this because it started as a vent and there’s a bunch of errors, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[skipsjack]

Hi your wing au is giving me extremely bad brainrot, and now I’m imagining the hexsquad teaching Hunter how to preen his wings properly. Or Camila shifting into mom mode and sitting him down to preen them, because if she can handle Luz’s wings, she can handle this catastrophe of a cardinal. Hunter’s just confused by how much he likes having actually okay looking wings/someone caring enough to help him.

Poor Hunter hasn't had to do much more than make them not look like an absolute clusterfuck. The most he's had them look nice is when he's presented for meetings or in public, and oftentimes he just has these fake feathers he slips in-between his feathers that make them look prettier, grander, and less patchy than his plucking would have you believe. Even then, it's not exactly preening, it's just making the outermost feathers look presentable.

Course, they're even messier when he arrives at Hexside. What with how little he's been looking after himself Period and the whole Hollow Mind incident making him pluck a Lot more. Luckily Gus is no stranger to it (he's a 'gifted kid' of course he stress-plucked at some point) and knows a few good tips to curb it and also, y'know, properly handle wings. Chew toys, they find, are the biggest help with Hunter's habit.

It takes a while before he lets anyone else preen his wings, bird brain getting antsy and whatnot. But he preens them with Gus and/or Willow around, half because he wants to know if he's doing it right, half because it's the only way they got him to preen at first. But eventually, Gus at one point does mention a patch of messy feathers on the backs of Hunter's wings and Hunter complains he can never reach them, and Gus offers, as he has every other time. The difference is that, only after a second of hesitation, Hunter agrees.

[homeofhousechickens]

A plucking chicken.

This hens owner has tried treating her birds with basically everything known to man because she thought this was caused by a parasite like mites because some of her other hens were missing feathers around their necks and tails. What likely happened is this hen in the picture is the one who has the plucking problem and she taught the others to do it as well.

For most chickens feather plucking and eating is a misplaced foraging instinct but it can also be caused by nutritional deficiencies. The owner has them on a good diet and they do get to free range pretty often. Notice that the feathers on both black hens are shiny and healthy.

The hen in the picture had most of her feathers back but the owner left for a weekend, likely meaning the flock was kept in their run the whole time and when she returned this hen was missing lots of feathers. This is a clue that this isnt from mites, mites dont wait for you to leave for a few days to attack your chickens. This damage was likely caused by the hen herself, notice how the bald spots are places she can easily reach with her own beak. The disruption of her routine and not being able to free range is likely what made this hen relapse.

Feather plucking in a flock can be tricky because it only takes one bird to start it for it to become a problem. The best way to prevent it from happening is to buy birds from good breeders, make sure the birds have plenty of room in confinement, and the birds are given perches and enrichment so they can escape from each other and busy their brains.

I told the owner that she might want to get a skin scrape done at the vets on the hen in question in case it is mites but to be prepared for it to really just be behavioral.

I personally think the hen would be best rehomed in this situation to somewhere with a bigger run and more free ranging time on a larger property. Her current coop and run are honestly kind of small for the aamount of large fowl she has and doesnt have alot of enrichment. Some birds do perfectly fine in confinement but other like this hen can really struggle in some situations. The owner was wanting to get more birds and i really think that extra enrichment and perches need to be added in the run before that happens.

[ask-a-vetblr]

do you see more parrots with or without feather plucking? are some birds more prone to it?

vet-and-wild here.

I see both. The really intelligent, neurotic birds such as cockatoos, macaws, African grays, and eclectuses seem to be prone to plucking, but any bird can pluck. Feather plucking can be related to pain, illness, poor nutrition, boredom, and other behavior issues. Once they start plucking it can be really hard to get them to stop. Someone may have great husbandry and provide adequate stimulation now, but the bird's prior husbandry/interaction was poor and now plucking is a habit.

[milk-carton-whump]

I wanted some wing whump. I wrote some wing whump :)

Tagging: @whumpasaurus101 @jordanstrophe @froggywhumpy @cowboy-anon @justabitofwhump @that-bug-dude @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @tears-and-lilies

CW: wing whump, feather plucking, broken bone, inhumane study, immortal whumpee, religious themes, experiments

Zurii's Wings

A scream of pain erupted from his mouth, his back arching from handfuls of feathers being thoughtlessly pulled from his wings. The removal of one hurt, nevermind the hell it was to suffer handfuls of them being torn from his back. Each one was sensitive, meticulously cared for so he could better grant miracles and continue to live the golden standard as an angel of The Queen. 

A light draft coming from a window gently danced over the painfully bare wing, sending a shot of agony through his body that made his breath catch in this throat. He managed a strangled sob, misery ringing through the sound. 

Dr. Isaac tsked quietly, finding the ethereal being's seemingly low pain tolerance to be a huge disappointment. He carefully jotted down his findings, sighing as some of his theories were proven false by the experiment. He looked over the pearlescent feather in his hands, noting the appearance of faint markings. 

Zurii meanwhile was trembling on the concrete floor, body barely able to comprehend the overwhelming pain he was in. He stared at the ground, one hand tightly clenched into a fist, wanting to badly lash out and hurt the man who caused him so much pain. 

The man knelt down and began to touch and examine the badly mutilated wing's counterpart, pristine white feathers unharmed by cruel hands. 

"Zurii, you realize how spectacular you are. You have four wings which means I can try my theories on each one. I'm sure you're as excited as I am by this revelation." 

The angel's sobbing started again only to be abruptly cut off by a sickening snap. One wing stripped completely bare of its feathers, another twisted the wrong way, and two still in perfect condition. The angel desperately tried to keep them tightly folded against his back, hoping that would be enough to protect them. 

[let-me-be-a-fander-in-peace]

All of the sides have wings, all of them.

The rest of them have beautiful wings.

(I haven’t decided what there wings are, I just know that they aren’t all feathered)

But the light sides think that he doesn’t have wings bc Virgil hides them.

He hides them bc he plucks his feathers when stressed, (and when he’s bored, but more often than not it’s bc he’s stressed)

And because of that he hides his wings.

He mostly plucks the underside of his wings near his back.

He is deeply ashamed of this, which makes him pluck more, repeat.

Because of this he doesn’t have as many feathers as he should.

2/3 of his wing near the back and under his wings can’t grow feathers because of how much he plucked.

One day after a tribble plucking session he is is sobbing in regret and sadness.

He feels so guilty about how many feathers he just plucked the a wave of regret hit him once he saw his wings.

He didn’t realize how many feathers he actually plucked. He only had 1/3 of his secondary’s, 3/4 of his secondary converts, and none of his scapulars on one wing. He has half of his scapulars and 1/3 of his secondary’s and secondary coverts on the other wing.

He didn’t pluck all of those feathers, some of the bald spots have been without feathers for a while.

But he was still overwhelmed with regret.

So as he was overwhelmed with guilt, Remus poped it to drag Virgil to the weekly Movie Night.

Only to be shocked by seeing Virgils wings.

Yeah, he remembers Virgils wings, but sense Virgil was hiding them and lied that he didn’t have them, he and Janus sorta agreed to not mention it.

As Chaotic ad he was, he didn’t want to reveal and info someone didn’t want to hear.

(Remus surprisingly good at keeping secrets)

But seeing Virgil looking like a plucked chicken made him worry, he didn’t understand why he choose to keep this plucking to himself, they could have helped him.

Remus wasn’t good at comforting people, but he was going to try.

Basically he yells a greeting and Virgil yells at him to leave in fear and shock.

Of course, Remus doesn’t, and he says, “why didn’t you tell us you were a plucked chicken?”

Virgil yells at him to go away, but Remus says something like “only if you let us not let you turn into a fully plucked Chicken, I mean, I think that that would look wayyyy cooler, but that doesn’t seem like your style Virgie-poo!”

Remus is really trying to say is, ‘I don’t care what your wings look like now, just let us help you.’

Virgil rubs his eyes and says something like “first of all, I’m not a chicken, and are you blind? I still have some feathers.” While trying to have his voice be as dead pan as possible, but completely failing, but he still sounds like he just finished crying.

“And anyway, why do care, just let me wallow in regret and go and go watch some animal porn or whatever you do..”

Remus convinces Virgil to go tell everyone else buy threating to eat their organs if they make fun of him.

Virgil hesitantly agrees, and they go out.

Bc I’m considering writing this, I’m not going to tell you how this ends, so tell me if you want to see this fully fleshed out.