Plucking Quaker

[Lady507]

Hey, so I have a quaker who has been plucking. I caught her in my backyard after one day she came flying and landed on me.
She was tame and I assumed that she got escaped. I put flyers and no one answered so I decided to keep her. She is very fun and loves to hang out with us. But even when I found she had been plucking her feathers. At first I thought might have been from the trauma of being out there and being hungry and thirsty. But it never went away. I've had her for a year now and its starting to get worse. I've tried many different things like giving her a daily bath or spending more time with her but it seems to make it worse. Now she has been bleeding from her chest as she is plucking blood feathers and I'm worried it might escalate to mutilation. I am thinking of putting pepper on her feathers to make her stop but I'm worried it might either make it worse or hurt the bird. So I'm wondering if any of you know how to deal with this problem. BTW there are no veterinarians around me and the closest one charges me almost 100 just for walking in and my parents don't like that. Please if you can help me. Thank you in advance and I look forward to seeing the posts.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I'm not an expert but I know that sometimes trauma and stressor make them start that behavior and it becomes a habit that can't be broken. I worked with scarlet and great green macaws in Costa Rica. We had one member of a pair of scarlets that was completely bald. We know it wasn't its mate because it had all the feathers on its head but not a single one on the rest of its body. It had been like that for years, lived fine but it didn't look good.

There's a lot of protein in feathers so you could try a higher protein ration to see if that helps.

I hope someone with more behavior experience can help.

 

[Ameraucanas]

The two main possibilities that come to my mind right away are
1) Some kind of skin parasite, or,
2) Anxiety,
both of which would be fairly easy to keep under control if you can figure out which one it is, although it might be something else, but those are the ones that immediently came into my head. Here are some good sites about each-

Skin parasites-
http://www.dummies.com/home-garden/...-get-rid-of-your-chickens-external-parasites/
https://www.southernstates.com/articles/chicken-parasites.aspx

Anxiety-
http://thepoultryguide.com/signs-causes-and-management-of-stress-in-poultry/
http://keeping-chickens.me.uk/chickens-health/stress-and-chickens

 

[Lady507]

Hello, thank you for answering and I checked all the websites. I would buy a spray and spray her just incase she does have parasites. I doubt it cause she never really shown other symptoms that relate to parasites. But you never know so I would try that. I'm also going to try feeding her a more protein diet what would you reccommend I give her. Thank you so much for answering I really appreciate it!

 

[Lady507]

Hello, thank you for answering and I checked all the websites. I would buy a spray and spray her just incase she does have parasites. I doubt it cause she never really shown other symptoms that relate to parasites. But you never know so I would try that. I'm also going to try feeding her a more protein diet what would you reccommend I give her. Thank you so much for answering I really appreciate it!