Rehabbing a CAG, and Lafeber's Avi-Cakes as main diet?

Hello! Moche (my blue Quaker) is doing wonderful- his first hatchday is coming up in less than a month Many many thanks to all the awesome people and information on this website... would not be as knowledgeable without you all!

But I've got some more questions for ya! I manage a dog and cat grooming salon, and the owner keeps her Congo African Grey there. Her name is Charlie, and she is probably in her 30s or 40s. She was handled a lot earlier in her life, but has not been in the past few years. She is on a seed diet and has started plucking herself.

Meet Charlie!


I really want to help Charlie, and hopefully take her home with me one day. When I take Moche to work (he has an extra cage there), she gets so excited and blows kisses and whistles at him.

In the meantime (read: until I can convince my boyfriend that we need another bird without him saying "like you need a hole in your head"), I am trying to get her on a new diet, clean up her cage, get her on a toy rotation, earn her trust etc.

She does great with toys... I got her some new things, and I was going to introduce them slowly but she immediately started tearing apart the one I put in there, so I gave her a couple. She loves bells and chewing on wooden blocks.

Her diet is what I'm most concerned about. She seems to really like Lafeber's Nutriberries and Avi-Cakes, but there's a TON of waste? Moche wastes a lot too, but I'm worried about it with her because I don't want to take away her seed because she appears to be "eating" the Avi-Cakes, come to find out she's not actually ingesting enough of them. I have been trying to get her to accept pellets (have tried Roudybush and Zupreem), but she's uninterested. Do you think Avi-Cakes as her main diet would be okay? She also gets fresh food, she likes broccoli, carrots, bread crusts, most fruit, etc.

Any other suggestions?

To be frank Charlie's diet is not ideal but if she is truly between 30 and 40 it hasn't hurt her much. Try reducing the seed and adding pellets. Try fruits and veggies in the am.

Avicakes won't hurt her just be sure she still has some seed in her diet.
If it were me I would only make minor changes at this stage of her life.


Older greys can be very set in there ways so it may take time.
All the best and thanks for making Charlie's "golden years" a but happier.

As an aside I always find it interesting that some of the lowest lived birds have survived on the worst diets.

Be Big,
Alan

Email or call zupreme and harrisons, they will send you samples. Try different sizes, our grey doesn't eat big pellets, he prefers smaller ones. He even eats the extra small zupreme. Try soaking them in apple juice. Oh and put the pellets and water bowls right next to each other. Papito likes to dunk his pellets. The most important thing is.... time, it may take a few months.

Ronald said:

Email or call zupreme and harrisons, they will send you samples. Try different sizes, our grey doesn't eat big pellets, he prefers smaller ones. He even eats the extra small zupreme. Try soaking them in apple juice. Oh and put the pellets and water bowls right next to each other. Papito likes to dunk his pellets. The most important thing is.... time, it may take a few months.

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Harrison's is very fast to respond on sending samples. I agree with the water bowl idea too. I found out this weekend our grey takes his toast and dips it in his water dish. I was confused as how there was always so many bread crumbs in his water when its on the other side of the cage. Now I know... he walks over there with it in his mouth.

I haven't tried the pellets yet either as they havent arrived yet, but should be any day. The Grey we adopted is 16 and has been on human food almost exclusively. He wont hardly touch the Lafeber's premium pellets that I bought when we got him as that was all that was around town.

I recently switched to Harrison's as well. The coarse is rather wasteful as he takes a piece out and breaks it into pieces and most go down the grate. I got samples as well and he seems to do well with the smaller size but not mixed with his Roudybush because they are too hard to find. I have the 5# of coarse High Potency that I had to break up a bit with a hammer before feeding. If only they had a size in-between those two, it would be perfect.

My GCC however took well to Roudybush (after a misinformed owner was feeding seed for some years. ) but when I offered the small bits of Harrison's he won't touch it.

My Grey also does alot of the bite and spit nonsense with stuff I give him like carrots. Only a little bit will he actually stop and eat, he likes to take a bite and see how far he can fling it. I was worried he was doing that with the Nutriberries as well but now I think he is actually taking some time to eat them. They both also get one square of Avicake a day also, the CAG's is crumbled up on his dry mix, my Conure just gets it crumbled on his playstand at lunch when I feed the dry.