Conures have beautiful feathers but these feathers can change throughout the bird’s life, one of the reasons a conure’s feathers may be changing color may be because the bird has feather bronzing.
This article explores everything you need to know about feather bronzing in conures.
Table of Contents
Feather bronzing conure:
A change in your bird’s feathers is usually alarming but this usually happens for a reason, here is what you need to know about feather bronzing in conures:
How it happens:
Feather bronzing is what happens when the bird’s feathers are rubbed too much either by the bird or by something else, and the feathers lose integrity.
Feathers have a thin layer of pigment on them, this is what gives the birds their color.
If the feathers are rubbed too much they will incur natural wear and tear then this pigment layer will be rubbed off. Another reason why this pigment layer may become rubbed off is over-preening.
The pigment on the bird’s feathers will be removed with wear and tear and this will expose the brown color under the pigment layer. This is called feather bronzing.
Not only will your bird’s feathers change color because of this, the bird’s feathers will also look frayed and worn out from all the rubbing
Feather bronzing should not be mistaken for malnutrition in the bird.
A color change can happen in both cases but the bird’s feathers will not be frayed if the bird is malnourished but the feathers will be frayed if the bird has feather bronzing.
What to do:
You don’t have to worry if your conure has feather bronzing, this will not negatively affect the health of your bird in any way.
However, what you should be worried about is why your bird is wearing its feathers down so much that it removes the color from the feather.
Once you’ve found the solution to this problem your bird will stop rubbing its feathers and removing the pigment
The feathers will not go back to normal as soon as the bird stops rubbing its feathers, the feathers will however fall off during the molting and new feathers will grow out once the old feathers are gone.
Make sure that your bird’s diet is optimized during the molting and new feather growth stage. to ensure that the feathers that grow in look as good as possible
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, Green Cheek Conure Black Feather Tips, Black Spots On Conure Feathers, Conure Feather Problems