My male 'tiel is going through a moult, and that means new feather growth in his wings. Nothing new, I've seen him go through this a few times now. This time has me nervous, however. In just this past week, I've had to pull 3 feathers because they broke and were bleeding. The first two I plucked weren't difficult, but the last one warranted a visit to the emergency vet.
The feather broke at the base, and my husband & I couldn't hold him still enough to get the last bit. So we used styptic powder and thought we were done. But he opened it up again during the night, and the scene was difficult to look at. Once the vet had a chance to look him over and tried to get the remainder of the feather we couldn't get to, there really wasn't a way to get to it. The shaft was soft & brittle, and she couldn't pull it out--they had to caudorize it to stop the bleeding. They didn't do any blood tests during the visit--he'd lost quite a bit of blood during the night and the vet didn't want to drain him further, so they want to see him back in 2 weeks.
So my question is, has anyone else gone through something similar, and is there anything I can do to try to strengthen his feathers? He won't eat fruits or veggies, no matter how often I change it up on him. He's been fairly resistant to change in his diet, which is what the vet suggested I do. "More veggies & pellets, less seeds" is her mantra. She wants me to give him pellets only instead of seeds...but the last time I did that, (gradually adding more pellets & offering less seed in the mix), by the time it was 3/4 pellets, 1/4 seed mixture, he'd still only eat the seed & leave all the pellets in the dish.
