Your conures are meant to have bright, vibrant, and beautiful feathers, so a sudden change in how the feathers of your birds look can be concerning to any bird owner.
This article looks into why you’re conure has black spots on its feathers.
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Black spots on conure feathers:
As vibrant as conure feathers are, black spots on the feathers can be quite concerning, here is why this may be happening in your bird:
Vitamin A deficiency:
Birds can be quite picky eaters, and unfortunately, this can be dangerous for them and can negatively affect their health.
One of the vitamins that a bird may lack is vitamin A and this may be causing what looks like black spots on your conure’s feathers, especially at the tips of the feathers.
What to do:
Supplementing vitamin A into your bird’s diet will get your bird’s feathers back to normal.
This color change from black won’t take too long as long as the vitamins are supplemented regularly (daily) into your bird’s diet.
You would need to either supplement foods rich in vitamin A into your bird’s diet or use a vitamin supplement and add this to your bird’s diet.
Foods that are rich in vitamin A include carrots, dandelions, yams, sweet potatoes, sliced fresh pumpkin (not canned pumpkin), bell peppers (especially green and red bell peppers), mangoes, peaches, apricots, papaya and dark leafy greens like kales parsley, alfalfa, spinach, and broccoli.
You could alternatively give your bird supplements and add these to their food, but consult a vet before you do this. Supplements can come in the form of liquids and powders.
If you choose to use a powder then the powder would need to be moistened and mixed into your bird’s food.
If you simply sprinkle the powder onto your bird’s dry food then the powder will simply fall to the bottom of the feeder.
You can alternatively add vitamin A drops to your bird’s water, make sure that you only add enough liquid to slightly turn the water yellow.
Avoid turning the water dark lime yellow, also, change the water after about a day or two, or else the water will start to smell like sulfur and the birds won’t drink it.
Bronzing:
If your bird’s feathers have patches or spots of black on them, and the feathers look raggedy, then this may be feather bronzing.
A conure’s feathers aren’t one color throughout. There is a thin layer of pigment coating the feather and this pigment is what gives the feather its color.
This thin pigment layer may be worn off if the bird is preening excessively or simply rubbing on its feathers too much.
This causes the pigment to come off and causes the dark black or dark brown color under the pigment to show up.
What to do:
There isn’t anything that you can do to bring the color back into your bird’s feathers, these damaged feathers will fall off at the next molt and a new fresh set of feathers will grow in with a fresh coat of pigment on them.
Make sure that the bird’s diet is optimal during molting and during new feather growth, this will ensure that the feathers grow in as healthy and vibrant as can be.
This means giving the bird a diet that is high in protein and fats.
Feathers are made up of 90 percent protein so this is needed to build healthy feathers during the feather regrowth stage.
The reason why your bird may be rubbing its feathers may be because the humidity levels in the house are too low causing the bird’s skin to become dry.
This may cause the bird to scratch itself and thus damage its feathers, you can try using a humidifier to keep the air moist ad keep your bird skin moist too.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Why Does My Bird Yawn When I Pet Him, Feather Bronzing Conure, Green Cheek Conure Black Feather Tips, Conure Feather Problems