Thursday, October 27, 2011

What does Moulting look like?

Here is one of my favorite photos of Ginger, fully feathers out and looking gorgeous.

And here is Ginger missing all her tail feathers.

Notice the hole at the back of her neck?  She can't reach back there to nibble off the keratin wrapper around those new feathers so those will take longer to blossom out.


She's just so sad looking.  I was really worried that she was loosing weight too.  But she HATES being picked up while molting.  Experts say that it's rather painful as pin feathers push out the old feathers.  So I've tried to oblige and not pick her up.  But I did tonight and set her on the scale and she's holding tight at 4 1/2 pounds.  Which really is a relief to me that she's not loosing weight through this process.

4 comments:

  1. I like the top picture. That's the model/actress I remember before the molt.

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  2. You should see Oyster Cracker! Same thing going on here!

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  3. @ Mike - Yes, I love that photo of Ginger. It's my favorite. Hopefully, she'll look like that once again soon.

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  4. @ Tilly's Nest - Poor Oyster Cracker. It's so difficult to watch this.

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