Proud of Sgt. Pepper

I am a nervous nelly by nature. I worry about my pets a little more than necessary...they are my kids.

With that being said an employee at the place I purchased Pepper had made a snide comment about her still eating formula a couple weeks ago. Well I guess I'm REALLY harming my girl. Her food choices are so bad [emoji6].

I have offered her and she eats all of the following:

Blueberries
Blackberries
Strawberries
Watermelon
Cantaloupe
Orange
Pineapple
Apple
Mango
Kiwi
Broccoli
Snap peas
Brussel sprouts
Bean sprouts
Cucumbers
Kale
Tomato
Carrots

She also eats pellets and seed. Yes she still likes a bit of formula at night but she eats it from a bowl and I mix it with pellets. Is that harmful?

breakfast this morning

People who put birds weaning from formula on a rigid time table always annoy me.

What you are doing is called "abundance weaning" and it has been proven to be best, you provide them lots of variety of fresh foods along with the continued comfort of small amounts of hand feeding until THEY decide they are weaned.

What many greedy breeders or uninformed people on the advise of greedy breeders do is called "deprivation weaning". Where the baby is denied food (hand feeding) to force it to become hungry enough to eat on it's own. A baby should never be left stressed and hungry or denied the comfort they feel when hand fed. Often times it comes to a point that the amount being fed is so small that it really is more about comfort than anything. Parents in the wild have been observed feeding their off spring for much longer than the arbitrary time tables made up by breeders to sell babies faster.

Ignore the misinformed ignorance of the person giving you grief, you are doing the best for your baby by not following some rule book of when they should be weaned. I have hand fed for over 25 yrs and I have never forced weaned and never would.

At some point you may want to switch that warm meal to something besides formula, a mash warmed, oatmeal or the like so that you are still providing that comfort if your bird wants it but not using actual formula. The only reason I say that is because most parrot feeding formulas on the market and certainly the most widely used by pet stores and big breeders (Kaytee) is nothing but gmo corn, wheat and soy not great imo.

Oh! Good plan. I can change it to oatmeal or rice and see if she will eat that. She likes that warmth so I will pick up some stuff to try today. Great idea!

When we brought her home they were only feeding her twice a day. After observing her and reading here I started feeding her more frequently. Within days of that she became a different bird. She began eating better, calling out so much less and making much happier noises.

It broke my heart to KNOW that she was begging to eat. [emoji35][emoji35][emoji35]

She still screams when she is hungry but it's on a schedule now. She always has a nice seed/pellet mixture available to her but she REALLY likes her fresh foods.