Normal molt? Normal Tail?

[Alyce Johnson]

I put this up on OPL & got no response. Will try cross posting it here.

Berta has something going on with her tail, and I dont know enough to know if it's normal. Also, she's molting really heavily and I dont know if that's normal.

She has a very skimpy tail, to begin with. Only one nice long feather. Shouldnt she have more than that? Or do some birds just not have such a nice tail? Could it be a nutritional issue, or is it just genetic?

Also, she lost an older tail feather today, and now there is a hole - sort of like an empty socket of flesh, in her actual backside - where this feather was.
Is that normal? It looks like it would hurt her, but it doesnt seem to.

She also has a squirrley feather - for lack of a better way to put it. You can see it in her gallery pics taken outdoors - it's on the bird's right side. It's the kind of curly, frazzled, shorter one that is both red & blue colored. That beat up feather is a new one, believe it or not - it's just been very slow to grow out and the sheath has been very thick and slow to come off. The keratin is so thick, I can barely peel it myself. And it seems to hurt her when I peel it, so I stopped. This seems odd, to me.

Her one nice long feather still has some sheath at the bottom too - maybe the last 1.5 inches or so. The sheath is very thick, and also, in the middle, there is a core of spongy black material - kind of thin keratin like material itself, when you pull a bit of it out, but all crinkled up, like black tissue paper stuffing the keratin tube.

It's kinda gross stuff - and when you pull it out or peel off bits of the keratin feather sheath, you get a thin clear liquid, too. (I stopped as I didnt think that was a good sign.) The black stuff is in the center of the sheath, on the underside of the feather. Is this a normal sounding new feather growth?

And she has started to molt again - after a very prolonged molt that had finally mostly stopped, she is losing tons of feathers again. They all seem to be old ones - really beat up. The only thing that worries me is that it has gone on so long - and it's so heavy - sometimes it looks like a bag of red feathers exploded in her cage.

She still has a lot of older visibly aged feathers - she looked really ratty when we got her and has gradually started looking nicer as she gets newer better looking feathers. But she still has a long ways to go. It was like she hadnt molted in a couple of years - all her feathers were really worn, when she came to us. As if she had not been well cared for.

Also, sometimes when she gets ahold of one of the larger feathers, she will chew the base. But I've checked every chewed feather, and they are all very worn. And I've seen it happen - the feather was being shed normally on it's own, and she just happened to catch it before it fell off of her. And then she wants to chew the pointed end. I always make her stop and take the feather away from her. Is that normal behavior? And could it lead to plucking?
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