I bought a young pair of Seramas a couple of weeks ago. Their cage mates had plucked out their tail and back feathers. I've had them seperated from my main flock to allow their feathers to grow back. I noticed today that the females feathers had grown back considerably while the male didn't seem to show much progress. I took him out to check him and noticed his tail was very scabby and swollen. I ran it under warm water and pulled off a pretty good size scab. The flesh underneath looks pink and healthy. There was a tiny amount of blood from some of the feather holes since when I pulled off the scab it pulled out some roots, but the feathers weren't growing, they looked like ingrown hairs. It was still very swollen and I noticed some other feather roots that looked kind of like ingrown hairs that were very swollen. I pulled out the worst looking ones and the root was very slimy and there was a little bit of pus like stuff. I cleaned his little tail off again with warm water and put him back in with his mate. Is this something normal that happens when they lose a lot of tail feathers? Did I do the right thing? What else should I do for him?
I'll try to post pictures of what his tail looks like now all cleaned up after he calms down a bit.
I'll try to post pictures of what his tail looks like now all cleaned up after he calms down a bit.