Home » Plants & Animals » Companion Birds » Understanding the Molt

Understanding the Molt

© Anne Watkins

It's molting season at my house right now, and the bottoms of the bird cages and the floors around them are littered with lots of colorful feathers. Wing feathers, tail feathers, head and back feathers, fluffy white down feathers -- there are so many, it looks like I'm collecting them to build another bird! Keeping the dropped feathers swept up is a full-time job.

Poor Rio always looks so scruffy when he's molting. His little body is covered with pin feathers, and so are his head and face. I tease him and call him my 'porcupine bird.' The new pin feathers sticking out all over his head are itchy, and I do my best to help him scratch the dried feather sheaths gently away. (Helping your bird preen its feathers is called 'allopreening' and is practiced among flocks of birds not only to aid in grooming, but to foster companionship.) Pancho, who is also in the midst of a molt, looks pretty much the same as usual. But just fluff his head feathers with a finger and you can feel the hard, touchy new feathers bristling out. His clipped wing feathers are dropping, too, and brand new flight feathers are taking their places.

Once or twice a year, all birds go through this natural process called molting. Molting is the gradual replacement of old, worn feathers with new ones, and can take several weeks or longer to complete. A few feathers at a time are shed so that the bird doesn't end up with bald patches or lose too many feathers at once. In the wild, this gradual shedding of only a few wing (flight) feathers at a time ensures that birds in their native habitat never lose the ability to fly. If a bird lost too many wing feathers at once, it wouldn't be able to escape its natural predators.

New feathers, called blood or pin feathers, grow in encased in a hard, white keratin sheath. A small blood vein running through the sheath nourishes the growing feather. If a developing feather is bumped the wrong way, it may bleed profusely. As the feather matures, the outer sheath dries and flakes off. During the molt, you may notice that your bird is preening more than usual. This is to free the new feathers from the dried sheaths. Sometimes the flaky white residue from the sheaths can make it look as though your bird has a bad case of dandruff! Don't be alarmed. Just treat your bird to a warm misting from a spray bottle and the flakes will be washed away.

The copyright of the article Understanding the Molt in Companion Birds is owned by Anne Watkins. Permission to republish Understanding the Molt in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.