Please help with advice on how long to let bird go without eating

[WannaBeAParrot]

Hi Everyone.
I've been missing Parrotforums due to an ailing laptop. So I have a lot of reading to catch up on the goings on.

Getting to it: How long would you wait to see if your conure will give in and eat the dry bird food you give her/him?

Some of you know Pritti - he's a funny, fussy, spoiled, manipulative, snuggly and smart 30-year old male cherry-headed conure. He has totally given up on pellets and I'm uncomfortable with that because with the Zupreem Natural and his fresh foods, he was getting a good balance of nutrition w/o providing any supplemental vitamin/minerals.

• Few months ago was on oral meds so I disguised it in a little peanut butter, or orange marmalade, or blueberry juice and soaked it up with 12 grain bread.
• He stopped eating pellets. So, I tried Lafeber's Nutri-berries and he ate out the seeds only and left rest. l
• So I tried Lafeber's Pellet-berries since they are 81% pelelts. He picks what he wants from them and more than half is in crumbs and wasted.

I've created a food montster asI kept a larger variety of home foods to his plate to the point where he had a buffet each time. I would like to bop myself over the head.

He waits and waits until I give him a lot of Lafeber's Pellet-berries (like a heaping half cup at a time) and eats them all (with half or more wasted to the bottom) - or he waits for fresh foods but will poo-poo each one until "the" one he wants shows up. I even bought the Zupreem nut flavor a couple of days ago and he tasted one, a few bites and ignores that completely.

So yesterday and today I only put a variety of pellets in all his dishes (cage and play areas). He simply won't take even one nibble. I let him wait until about 11am today hoping he would, but ny about 11:20 am he was screaming, picked him up from top of his usually open cage, we snuggled and played for half hour, put him at play area and went right for the food dish and ate nothing and started the food screams again. The last time he ate was night before at about 9pm (chicken, plain cooked pasta, broccoli). So at around Noon today, I gave him some pasta and Pellet-berries. I can tolerate the screaming, but don't want to stress him out about not having food he'll eat. After all, the little guy is 30. But on the other hand, he needs to eat balanced nutrition.

I can't let him just not eat. How long would you let your bird go to see if s/he'll finally give in and eat the pellets?

What's your advice to get him back to eating pellets (he hates Harrisons anything)?

Do you think picking at Lafeber's Pellet-berries is healthy enough (I don't)?

Thanks.

 

[dragonlady2]

What about grinding the pellets up and putting some on his favourite food?

 

[BoomBoom]

That's a great idea, dragon lady.

What I did to get Boomer eating his pellets more is soaking it in the juices of whatever fruit he likes to eat. I also use Zupreem natural. He hated it at first but I kept adding a few in his bowl of raspberries or blue berries or mango and he would eat it saturated in the juices.

Has Pritti recovered well enough to start withholding food through the day? Is he back to his normal weight? Maybe wait till the end of the day or early in the morning to feed him the pellets first, then the fresh produce, then when he's had his fill, the rest of the stuff he wants.

Sorry I don't know how long to wait to withhold the food.

 

[khaiqha]

To switch my ringneck from seeds to pellets I would crush up the pellets and coat apple slices in them. Each day I would add more crushed pellet and less apple. After a week I was able to give just pellets.

 

[Oedipussrex]

i have a similar problem. Pickle used to love pellets, but then i was unorganised and they ran out so he was getting mixed seeds and museli for a week or two and he didnt want to go back once the pellets returned. XD
He has a smaller cage where he sleeps and i put water and some pellets in that. It is in a room that gets the morning sun so if i dont wake up when he does usually he has made a small attempt to make the pellets breakfast before i move him to his real cage. Every second or third day though i cave again and give him some museli or seed mix though because im about him being underweight even though being small is normal for him. :/
I would say you couuld withhold the yummy dry foods indefinetly. (depends how stubborn Pritti is as well) As long as you still give a couple of meals of fresh foods each day as well. (pickle wasnt a fan of fresh food either, until it became a choice between that and pellets) lol

 

[MonicaMc]

Is it out of the question to change him to a fresh food based diet? Something along the lines of 30% healthy cooked/sprouted grains, 15% cooked/sprouted *healthy* legumes (if you use cheap legumes, they *must* be cooked for human consumption), 45% mixed vegetables and 10% fruits. If you have a food processor, you can chop most/everything into tiny pieces and mix it together so he doesn't have a choice of what to pick out from the mix.

Add in some sprouted seeds for more variety?


I bet, with the mash, if he likes it, you can crush up some pellets and mix that into the mash?



I recently bought a 12 pack(?) of 8oz(? - they're small, but not tiny, did want smaller ones though) canning jars, and I'm now looking for some sort of mesh (wire or plastic with small holes) for the top, so I can try sprouting for the birds more often. My little birds *love* sprouted seeds! Charlie on the other hand likes safflower seeds, dried fruit and pellets. Everything else, I just about have to hand feed to him to even get him to try it! That, or eat it myself! Whether or not he likes it, he'll keep trying it! And if he doesn't like it, he'll just create a big mess! :20:

 

[JasmineGCC]

How's Pritti doing? Are you having any success with his diet?