I learned something new yesterday, and decided to share in the hopes that others will avoid a similar situation.
Warning: Sad story incoming
I have three birds that recently had issues with the other birds picking on them and pulling out their feathers, so they each had a large bald patch on their lower back.
I put them in a separate cage so the feathers could grow back, and hopefully the others will leave them alone once they look normal again (birds tend to peck at anything that looks unusual).
At the same time, I had another bird who developed a large lump high in her abdomen, halfway under the rib cage. I was first alerted to the issue by a slight prolapse in her vent, felt the lump, and figured she was eggbound (a term for when a bird has an egg that just won't come out), although the location of the egg was unusually high in her body.
Well, I've dealt with eggbound birds before, and until now, a combination of vasoline, a warm bath, calcium supplements, and (if needed) Preparation H, knocked the problem out in no time. This time, though, the doggone egg wouldn't budge. Upon researching, I thought perhaps it had broken inside her body and, since egg sticks so, had glued itself to her insides, but I really didn't know for certain.
Well, after several days of treatment, the damned egg still wouldn't move, and she developed peritonitis (an infection in the abdominal cavity). Once that happens, the odds of survival are basically nill and, sadly but unsurprisingly, she didn't make it.
Determined to learn from my mistake and not let this happen again, I steeled myself and performed an autopsy to investigate the egg that had given me such grief.
And what did I find? Not an egg at all. The "egg" I had felt was actually a dense wad of feathers that had created an egg-sized ball in her intestinal tract, corking her up tight. I've assisted in surgeries on cats and dogs to remove similar blockages, and nothing short of surgery would have saved her. If you've ever tried to pull apart an old bird's nest and been surprised at its tensile strength, you have an idea of how tightly packed and woven these feathers were.
I don't know if she was the one who plucked the feathers off her roommates, but she certainly did swallow the evidence. It never occurred to me that feather-plucking could be as big a problem for the perpetrator as for the victims.
Poor birdie.