Offering security
Patrick even positioned a ficus tree between Arkie’s cage and the nearby window so she wouldn’t feel as exposed and hung peacock feathers in her cage for her to chew and hide behind.

Plucking can range from a relatively minor habit...

Arkie gets a few hours of liberty every evening and spends time outside in a small cage on the weekends while Patrick does yard work at her sunny southern California home.

Patrick let Arkie’s wings grow out as part of her multi-pronged regimen of therapies, but recently began clipping them again out of concern for her safety.

Within a few weeks of beginning her new life, Arkie began to pick less and is now fully feathered.

"I'm hoping she will stay feathered. I feel like I know much more than I did when I got her and learning more all the time, thanks to the feather picking mail list and the senegal mail list," says Patrick.

Sammy had picked a few feathers from his neck and legs before, but nothing would prepare the Buchanans for what was to come.

Triggered by molting
When new tail feathers began to replace the ones he lost, Sammy plucked almost all of his down and chewed the skin on his rump and back until it bled. Each time another tail feather molted, about every six weeks, he would attack himself anew.

He "ripped out his down, acted like a dog with fleas, and shook his head a lot," remembers Maggie.

By December 1999, Sammy had stopped moving or eating on his own and had lost 13 percent of his weight. By then the Buchanans had tried a laundry list of cures, including hydroxyzine and steroids for allergies, soaking baths in aloe and medicated shampoo.

With Sammy unchanged, they sadly contemplated euthanasia.

One last idea
In desperation, Maggie decided to try one more thing: slathering Vitamin E oil on Sammy’s self-inflicted wounds.

Within seconds, it became apparent the oil provided the relief the bird needed.

The next day Sammy began talking again and the day after that he destroyed a brand-new television remote.

"I knew then that Sammy had come back to me," says Maggie, who enthusiastically continued to apply the Vitamin E. Five days after the first application, Sammy began to shed his ugly, fibrous scabs and a week later was fully healed.

An imperfect solution
In the 22 months since, Sammy has backslid several times, each time triggered by a molt. He remains on a low dosage of the anti-psychotic drug haloperidol.

The Buchanans estimate they have spent a couple of thousand dollars on medical tests, behavioral consulting and medications for their bird.

In February, Maggie launched a Web site and mailing list for parrot owners whose birds feather pick and mutilate.

"It was out of desperation, frustration and selfishness that I started the list," she admits frankly. "I was hoping to find someone who had the answer for Sammy's mutilation."

Although she has yet to figure how to stop molting from upsetting Sammy, Maggie considers the vitamin E oil something of a miracle treatment. Each time Sammy threatens to chew his flesh, she quickly applies a small amount of oil. That usually does the trick.

Linda Hodge of Riverview, Fla., is sold on Avian Naturals’ Just Say No dehydrated and freeze-dried vegetable, fruit and nut mixes.

Photo courtesy Foster Parrots, Ltd. ...to more extensive feather damage, such as that exhibited by this eclectus.

She believes the organic food protects her Timneh African grey, Macy, from an allergy to sulfite, typically used to preserve dried fruit.

Sulfite allergy relieved?
Hodge bought Macy from a local pet shop about a year ago because she felt sorry for her. The bird had overpreened the color off her feathers and snipped pieces off, leaving her legs, underbelly and neck looking fuzzy and oddly silvery.

When Macy began to lose weight, too, a frightened Hodge decided to switch the bird’s diet to Just Say No on the advice of a woman who was giving it to her allergic son.

A week after starting the new diet, pinfeathers appeared and now, three months later, Macy’s "beak is smooth and shiny, her weight is increasing along with muscle mass and her picking has stopped," says Hodge enthusiastically.

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