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I would go with mites and/or a poor quality diet. Feed it well and wait until next moult to see if the feathers improve. Natural daylight (direct) always helps too

I treat regularly for mites, and while I am late this time as I was waiting on the avimite she came to me looking like that and has never improved. I do feed a pretty good diet with good quality seed and suppliments as I struggle with getting the gouldians to eat anything fresh even with the societies in with them. she's had 2 molts with me and its not changed anything. :( the other 2 birds she came with I struggled to keep alive (I spent upwards of 1k in vets fees and lab bills) and both are dead. they wer e always feather perfect. I assumed when she was being collected (and was told) that she hadn't finished molting at that stage. 

If you want some good advice from a profession to a beginner, do not take on rescue birds or birds that have issues. It will put you off keeping them right from the start as there will always be problems. Look for a reputable breeder to buy healthy birds. Happy healthy birds have next to no problems and will save you a fortune as well as headaches. 

Just to let you know, from time to time, you might see the odd forum error, page not loading etc, this is because I am programming more stuff for the forum. I am trying to add more functionality. I have a small list of things which need doing such as adding the ability for members to Lock their posts. I have just programmed the 'highlight new posts in bold' but it needs further testing. It just means that a new unread post will show in bold text until you read it, then it turns to normal text. There is still quite a bit to add on here, but it is an ongoing project. By the way, was going to ask you, do you have issues uploading a profile photo or setting country in your edit profile page?

in this case, I bought 3 birds as part of my foundation. they were bought from a reputable breeder who is highly thought of  in the UK.  She was looking tatty and this was explained away as her going through molt. I spent a lot of time searching for parent reared birds from good stock. Her parents and grand parents won many many shows. I probably should have rejected her but felt a bit sorry and it was no issue for me to take her home.  She would have probably been culled had I left her. 

I paid quite a lot of money for those 3 and theres only so much research you can do, and then you have to take a leap of faith, however I genuinely trusted this person who I considered a friend as well and assumed they would look after me at least a little, knowing that I was starting out. 

yes I have tried to log in a couple of times and its not allowed me and I just had a weird looking screen so left it a day or so and tried again.  I am not tech savvy so uploading stuff is hard for me. I did try to do the profile pic etc but my image was always too big lol

It should be working for you, but I will check to see what is happening later with the profiles, I know I did change the whole code for the site. I might even use recoder script so that it will resize the image on upload, that way you will be able to upload any size photo. I still have a few bugs here to fix. 

Just be careful what birds you bring home, you don't know what illnesses they have and some can kill your whole flock 

UPDATE: happy to report that the tests are both negative, so no bpfd or APV. that was a tense time. This is the 3rd time I have tested for these two, so I'm content to believe the outcome.  still no wiser as to whats going on, I am going to have to assume its bad genetics. I will continue to monitor her, making sure she is getting enough vitamins and everything she needs. After 2 years I am not sure there will be much change, but she is happy and lively, eats plenty etc. I am trying to adapt the aviary a bit better to accomodate her. 

There does look to be a feather cyst if I am not mistaken. Great,👍 the tests are a good outcome, now you can just feed her a good diet. If it is not diet related then it probably is just a gentic thing which there is nothing you can do. She should be fine 😃

I am very relieved. her wings feel fused, I can't explain it, they are not fused, they feel really thick so where the phalanges and radius bones are, they don't feel normal to me. anyway, at this point I just want her to be happy.  my current feeding programe is as follows. 

Mon-Friday aviform calciform with D3

Wednesdays Avi-mite 

Versale - Laga foreign finch mix (ad lib)

every other day minimum I like to give fruits and veg, and perle morbide. 

red millet twice a week. 

Egg food 

every 2 weeks boiled eggs with shell on.

occasionally dehydrated veg

they have acceess to cuttlefish, grit, mineralised grit, herbs,  charcoal. during molting season I add iodine granules. 

clean regularly with F10, Spray regularly with AIL, wash with clean and clear checkmite (cages, perches etc) poop off for the java wood perches and wooden surrounds. 

during molt or occasionally they also get Aviform Advance. 

any suggestions there that I could improve on?