wearing down front of beak

[mgood01]

Hi there,

My female blue-fronted amazon has a really weird flat spot on the front of her beak. I'm assuming she's spending time during the day doing something crazy with the bars of her cage. I've seen her occasionally take a piece of food or birdie bagel in her beak and do this weird OCD thing where she bites one of the bars keeping the food in her beak.

I'm guessing this has something to do with it being spring, as all Amazon behavior seems to go crazy at that time. Just want to make sure she can't actually hurt herself. Those things are pretty strong, right?

Thanks!

[txbird]

If you have observed where the bird is doing this, you might try what I've done in the past with success.

When I have had a bird rub a particular place in the cage and wear a spot on it's beak, I placed a cage bar-mounted toy there so the bird can't get to that spot, which worked.

[mgood01]

Thanks Ed. I actually set up my web cam so I could watch her during the day while I was at work and see what the heck she was doing. I highly recommend this to people. She really does play with her toys and investigate some surprises I leave for her in the morning. She also naps a lot more than I expected.

In any event, I saw exactly where she was rubbing her beack, and I've moved her adding tape toy to that area. She seems to be okay with that, and I don't have to worry about her hurting herself.

[amandaemily11905]

my bfa has the same thing on hers. when she gets angry, she bangs her beak on whatever is closest to her. is she empties her food bowl, she will bang her beak on the rim of the bowl and then poke her head in there and go, "hellooo?". the vet told me this is normal for them and to try to discourage it but thats about all i can do! hope this helps

[birdsnreps]

i had macaws do this, they would be so anxious to come out of the cage that they would either hang on the side of the cage or go down to the floor of the cage and they would just "dance", sway from side to side, the whole time rubbing the fronts of their beaks on the bars. it always gave them little indents, nothing serious though :) but hey, you found a way to stop it, so thats great!