Bald spot on goose "thumb" (alula)

[slburger7264]

Hello!

I have a five year old female Embden and I just noticed the other day that she has bald spot on both of her "thumbs" (see picture, sorry it is blurry!). Is this normal? Other than missing a few feathers there, the area seems to be fine and isn't abnormally red or hot like it might be if she had an infection. I have another 6 month old female and I checked out her wings for reference and her "thumbs" seem to be mostly feathered. I might be overthinking this, but I wanted to see if anyone else has noticed something similar on their geese. Thank you!

 

[Goosebaby]

One of my ganders has that from repeatedly using his wings to smack others around, usually me, I’m guessing some kind of ware spots.

 

[slburger7264]

One of my ganders has that from repeatedly using his wings to smack others around, usually me, I’m guessing some kind of ware spots.

Thanks! That is kind of what I was thinking. We’ve had our birds penned up at night since winter started and I think she has a habit of flapping her wings in close quarters.