4 months old not eating

Hello everyone.

Again with the eclectus that was flying into windows. She is more or less 4 months old and she won’t eat anything ANYTHING unless apples. We tried to remove the apple and add other veggies to see if she would feel obliged to eat them but she didn’t. She is losing weight, so what should we do? She only eats apples, and the only other thing we could make her eat a bit was a kiwi... no veggies at all *facepalm*

Eclectus as a species have a very specific diet and it becomes ever more important to be shifting them to that diet.

With very young birds, it is not uncommon for them to want to be feed a formula based diet form time to time. Likely what is happening here...

From the medical side, assure that the eclectus has an empty crop prior to feeding as it could be possible for the Parrot to have an impacted crop.

Hmmm... birds can be VERY stubborn when it comes to giving them something different. Especially if they have been eating one particular food consistently. You will definitely be able to shift/expand her dietary focus, but it will take dogged persistence. Basically, you have to out-stubborn your ekkie.

Thing is, it can be tricky. Some birds, like yours, apparently, are stubborn enough to simply go on a hunger-strike rather than try something new. But you just have to try a bunch of different ways for serving the food.

Keep in mind, a lot more factors into a bird's tastes than just... well... taste. Their sense of taste is actually far poorer than ours, so other things such as texture, size, and softness/hardness also come into play. For example, my ekkies used to HATE carrots. Cooked to mush or served raw, didn't matter. Carrots were evil and to be avoided.

Unless, of course, they were grated. Grated carrots were the absolute BEST! Weird, right? But whatever works. Point is, I found this out by playing around with every way to serve carrots I could conceive of. Which meant lots of misses before my eventual hit. Which is where the persistence comes in.

Something you can try is serving veggies - along with just a few small bits of apple - cut up fine and mixed into warm (unflavored) oatmeal. At 4 months, your ekkie isn't far removed from her weaning. As such, soft, warm, mushy foods might hold some allure. And oatmeal has the added benefit of packing on the grams.

And tasting these veggies could wind up opening a whole new world for her.

Something else you can try is flavoring the veggies with a touch of coconut oil. Just a touch, mind you, as coconut oil is a bit fatty. But many birds have been drawn in by the flavor. Just melt a little and drizzle over the chop you are serving.

Throwing in some pomegranates might also help, as they tend to be irresistible to most birds and are also among the most nutritious of fruits.

Yet another option is dicing greens until they are so small that your ekkie will accidentally eat some with her preferred apple or kiwi. That's how I got my birds to try out dandelion.

Heck, it might even come down to your eating some of the foods you want them to try and obviously enjoying it. Many parronts have gotten their birds to eat things simply by eating it themselves and making a show of enjoying the living daylights out of it. (Yes, making fools of ourselves is a regular part of bird-keeping.)

And just so you know, in my experience it isn't always this difficult. My birds eventually got to the point that they just trust whatever I throw in their dish, now. But it took time. And persistence.