Introducing Marley - and a few questions!

Hello everyone!

I wanted to give you an update on Marley. He is home! We got to bring him home Saturday night. My husband and I are beyond ecstatic and have fallen in love with the little guy!

So a few things, just a heads up, this post may be long 😆.

Marley came home with Goldenfeast Goldn'obles, his cage, and a few toys (mostly baby toys that you can tell he didn't want anything to do with) The previous owner said he is about 15 or 16 yo and is a SI. She mainly fed him his pellets and a pepper in the morning for his vitamin A. She said he didn't like to play, didn't talk, chew, or fly, and didn't like his perch in top of his cage. She said "I don't even think he knows he's a bird." They didn't spend a whole lot of time with him due to their other animals and his fascination with her mothers necklace. So, he was kept in his cage most of the time. His beak was severely overgrown. I knew they meant well, but I could tell they obviously didn't do much research on the breed. He was very well socialized and came right To my husband and I, but saw fairly quickly that he took to my husband and didn't want to leave his side.

Since he has been home, he has shown the complete opposite. He flew around the house a few times, loves to sit on his perch on the top of his cage. He still hasn't said much but a few coos and some whistles. I heard him the other day mumble "Up, Up." (So there is hope!). He absolutely adores my husband (and I'm kind of jealous) and screams when he sees him come home. We keep him out of his cage most of the day. We talk to him constantly in hope he may pick some words up.

We immediately went to the store to buy him some goodies. Broccoli, cauliflower, jalapeños, peppers, kiwi, pineapple, pumpkin seeds, almonds, bananas, radishes with the tops, carrots, cucumber, chia seeds, lentils, pasta, etc. He seems to welcome the new foods and thoroughly enjoys them!!

We took out the baby toys and decluttered his cage, there was not enough room for him to even breathe! We bought him a preening toy, a cuttlebone. He still has no interest in chewing.

We took him to the vet yesterday to get his beak trimmed. He did well in the car and even sat on my husbands shoulder most of the ride and didn't seem spooked by anything. The vet said he is about underweight, probably due to his long beak, and his diet should mainly consist of pellet food and only 20% veggies and fruits (which I found conflicting due to my extensive research) of course, said we shouldn't let him sit on our shoulders because he could take a chunk out of our face. I didn't say much because this may be just a generalization of his parrots 😉. He showed Marley his Scarlet Macaw and Blue fronted Amazon, which, he didn't seem the least bit interested. Although he met Chili, our neighbors Blue Fronted Amazon and was pretty excited.

I noticed the past few nights he does a lot of wing flipping. I am not sure if this is due to him molting or because of the diet he has been on and I am a bit concerned. The vet didn't say much about it, although he was great with Marley and did a good job with trimming his beak, Im looking into finding a more educated vet with the Eclectus breed. He even said himself he hasn't seen one in a very long time and everyone in the office could not even pronounce Eclectus!

I have tracked down the possible breeder of Marley and hope to get in contact with them soon!

So I have a few questions for my fellow parrot lovers:

1. Is Marley "too old" to learn how to talk?
2. What is your experience with wing flipping? Seems that Marley either does this when I'm around or in his cage.
3. I have read good things about the Goldenfeast food brand, is this something we should continue with Marley? Is there a better brand?
4. The breeders website suggested a probiotic, a 2 week supply of capsules to sprinkle on his food to "regulate and help with previous poor diet" is this something you would use?
5. Any suggestions on what to feed Marley to help him gain weight? We feed him a couple almonds a day. Is there any other nuts we can safely feed him? Everything we bought is purely organic with no salt or additives, preservatives or pesticides.

Any insight, suggestions, etc would be greatly appreciated! I have attached some before and after photos as well! Thank you!

Congratulations on the new addition to your household! It's great that he's been social with both of you and has even begun bonding with your husband. Just make sure to keep up with having him come to you on a regular basis as well. If he winds up spending the overwhelming majority of his time with him rather than you, he could wind up becoming overbonded to your husband and start viewing you as a rival. So keep up his socialization.

Looks like you're off to a good start with his food selection! The vet likely said what he said because he is not as experienced with eclectus parrots. As long as you are able to provide him a balanced and varied diet, fresh veggies and fruits will cover all of his nutritional needs. As I'd mentioned in your welcome thread, while some claim to have found some measure of success with organic pellet brands designed specifically for eclectus parrots and their unique dietary needs, most pellet brands are not good for them. Pellets designed without the specific sensitivities of expects parrots in mind have been known to cause toe-tapping and wing-flipping. Not saying the pellets are definitely the cause of Marley's wing-flipping, but it is possible. Even probable.

Here is another link to a thread I did about another possible cause of toe-tapping and wing-flipping. Might not be the case here, but ever since I learned of this I've always made a point of spreading the knowledge: http://www.parrotforums.com/eclectus/61889-okay-let-s-talk-abv-pdd-toe-tapping.html

Wow, that was quite the overgrown beak! Your vet did a great job of working it back down. That much overgrowth could be due to the fact that he doesn't play with toys or rub his beak against anything, or it could be due to a dietary deficiency. To be on the safe side, you should address both potential issues. You've already taken some positive steps with his diet. You'll want to continue bolstering the variety of his foods. And as for the toys, he may just need to be taught how to play with them.

You go about encouraging play with toys by first making sure you've bought the types most likely to draw his interest. For instance, ekkies most enjoy chew toys composed of soft woods. Their beaks are quite capable of carving through the harder woods, of course, but they don't seem to derive the same kind of pleasure from them. Once you have these toys, you can pique his curiosity by playing with them in front of him. Things that seem to intrigue his "flock mates" have the best chance of intriguing him. Might take a while, but be persistent.

And on to your questions...

1) No, Marley isn't too old to learn to talk. Eclectus parrots, as a species, can be extremely good talkers. But individually, some ekkies are more inclined to talk than others. Basically, just because you have a parrot that can talk doesn't necessarily mean that he will. But just talk to him as often as possible to give it the best chance of happening.

2) Already covered earlier in this post.

3) I've never used Goldenfeast pellets, so I couldn't speak to their quality. But personally, I feed my ekkies a fresh diet of sprouts, fruits and veggies, with some oats, grains and legumes, as well as some nuts and maybe a teaspoon or so of seeds for training treats. I don't feed them any pellets.

4) I wouldn't use a probiotic unless specifically prescribed by an avian veterinarian.

5) A healthy diet with his newly trimmed beak should bring his weight up soon enough. Pasta, oatmeal and brown rice are also good options for bringing up weight. I wouldn't go too overboard with nuts, as a couple a day is already pretty much as much as he should get.

Other nuts he can eat include: pine nuts, palm nuts, walnuts, cashews (no peanuts), pistachios, pecans, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts and macadamia nuts. The ones in italics, along with almonds, are the most nutritious ones.

Good for you, Chrispy, for all the sharp moves you're making, including consulting folks here.
Wow, Anansi, how good of you to help with all those considerations.
Chrispy, also... I always suggest... take any other issue or topic which interests you, and use the Search Tab to read, read, read about it. I do that a lot.

It looks like you've done good by him so far - that beak was huge!
I hope he brings you as much joy as you have brought him, keep up the good work, and I'll look forward to reading more about him and seeing your further updates! He's a cutie