Eating Habits, for our newly adopted girl

Eating Habits….

Call me a new paranoid papa, but here goes and my apologies for the long post.

We recently adopted Nala a 6 year old Blue & Gold Macaw, that was in need of a new home. I’m not new to Macaws but I have been away for a while, as my last B&G (Chloe) stayed with my ex wife and daughters due to the close bond they had. Please keep in mind Nala has new humans, new location (our house) a new cage, a new sleeping cage. Behavior wise I think she is handling it quite well, she kinda quiet compared to my daughter’s B&G, however she is very affectionate and is quite the snuggle bug, she absolutely lovers the attention and the scratching she’s getting. She does a lot of preening and beak grinding and is starting to play a little with her toys, but not as much as Chloe.

It’s our understanding that Nala ate a lot of human food, sometimes eating right off the human plates. The feed that was in the bowl in her old home was not the best, lots of seeds, sunflower seeds and such. She is not eating much out of her feed bowl that we have provided. It contains zupreem fruit blend for MACs and a custom blend that includes some seeds, nuts, fried fruit and vegetables, and we throw in a Walnut, one or two almonds and one or two hazelnuts. My daughter’s B&G would tear that bowl up by the next day or it would be well picked through. Our bird Nala barely touches her food bowl.

She does however eat when we hand her food either on her perch or in her cage, zupreem fruit blend pellets, Walnuts, Almonds, Hazelnuts, Nutri-Berries, Apples, Grapes, Bananas, Star Fruit and so on. She does eat although she eats very slow, compared to my daughters B&G, who gobbles everything down quickly. Her stools look pretty normal unless she had a lot of watery fruit that night. She did get very excited tonight when my fiancee was making dinner and we gave her a couple small pieces of cheese and some sliced turkey. She gobbled the cheese up in no time and took her time with the turkey.

When it comes to water, I have seen her go down to her water bowl, but not very often. We have put her near the kitchen sink and she loves to drink out of the faucet, she actually drinks quite a bit that way, then she starts to play and fling water every where and it is too much fun to watch her play.

Incase you did not read my other post, we did take her to the vet and she got a great check up, although he did say, that she was a little chunky but too much or in a bad way, the vet said it was nothing to worry about and that with the diet that we would be giving her it would fix it self.

On a side note, tonight is the first night that she's sleeping in her sleep cage, so I hope that’s going well. It’s in another room since I’m a night owl. Kinda hard to tell hows she’s sleeping because I don't want to go in and disturb her.

Again my apologies for the long post, I just want to do what’s right for Nala and help her as much as I can with the transition. Also on a side note she is just as friendly to my fiancee as she is to me and she has even let 2 of our friends get close and rub her on the back.

Any thoughts, comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

All sounds good!

Longs posts are good. They have details that folks normally have to ask for from shorter posts!

So you're going through what I'm going through. Romeo came from a home that fed him mostly seeds and human food like cold cuts, chicken nuggets and french fries. He got no fruits or veggies of any kind.

It's taken a LOT of work to find healthy foods he'll eat. I've done a lot of what you've done in finding things he will eat. But then I just stopped catering so much and let him be "hungry" I'd never starve him but if he'll eat his pellets but just chooses not to for the sake of a temper tantrum to get crap food then he can just yell in the other room and be hungry.

Each morning he gets a nice breakfast of some fruit or chop that he likes. He gets pellets in his cage with a treat or two (mostly to entice him to the bowl) and then for dinner he gets more stuff he likes. No more lunch meats and fries though! (Ok, maybe a fry on the occasions I have one)

We've had some growing pains. And I've experienced many of them. I also know the difference between a hungry call, an attention call, a cranky call and a "I AM SO PISSED OFF RIGHT NOW" call. (As do my neighbors.)

On the plus side he hasn't ripped his bowl off the bird proof mount and thrown it at me in a few weeks so progress!

So it sounds like you're doing the same thing I did: take a bird who likes junk food and introduce a healthy diet. (Now, wanna come do the same for me?)

Nothing to add. A lot of our members make a main thread in the appropriate species sub-forum, about their parrot(s) and use that for updates, stories etc. Use the other forums to ask questions etc. You dont need to do it like that of course, but it promotes good writing skills, and makes a nice read for new members who want to know about the various parrots and their story. Example, mine is "Right now Salty is...." on the Amazon forum.