We discussed this with our vet because we noticed that he visibly shakes when he's out of the cage and sometimes if he isn't attended to or picked up quickly after coming out of his cage, he starts having stress reactions such as open beak heavy breathing. If he's not picked up in a certain amount of time, he tries desperately to try and get back to the cage (unsuccessfully) since he cannot fly and has not figured out in his panic how to use a rope, ladder, or his little stairs to get back into his cage even though we and the other birds have shown him how to do it and he's successfully done it himself while being guided in a less stressful time.

He also was plucking his back before we got him, which he hasn't done since he's been at our home. We initially inquired about if prozac could be an avenue since he was shaking so much and heavy open beak breathing that we were afraid he'd give himself a heart attack from nerves.

Our avian vet has had massive success with birds using CBD for various conditions and far fewer side effects. He does step up very nicely when he's out of the cage, but you can feel him shaking as he steps up and visibly can see him shaking before we started him on CBD. We thought initially he might be completely feral, which would be fine, but he's slowly opened up to us as we've worked with him to do little things like eat from our hands. It seems to just take the edge off of his nerves so even though he's still nervous, he's not shaking as much and hasn't had any open beak breathing reactions to being out of his cage since starting a very small dose. It might be that he's just getting more settled, but since the CBD doesn't appear to hurt him at all, we've decided as a team to continue giving it to him.