Banner's first morning

[dawnkyung]

Yesterday, Banner didn't really eat once we got him home, although i did make sure that he drank some water. He noshed on a few pellets and a nutriberry, but really wasn't all that interested in exploring his cage. He sat on the highest perch and took it all in. I'm not terribly worried as I know it'll take some time for him to be comfortable. We took him out this morning and put him on his playstand, where he's been happily playing with his toys/chewing on the bottlebrush. We offered pellets in the playstand cups as well as some broccoli and carrot. He's still not interested in eating, although he did drink some water this morning as well.

He readily steps up, especially to come out of his cage. At the store, the employees that he knows were able to pretty much just come up to him and grab him and give him head scratches and kisses and he submitted. With us, he sort of gives a little disgruntled noise and tries to get away from our hands, although he doesn't nip. I told the bf that we should just take it slow until he's comfortable with us. I think as long as he's stepping up, we should just work on making him feel at home and the scratches will come later, once he knows he can trust us.

Anyway, one of the employees at the Golden Cockatoo told me that the one thing she doesn't like about the king's cages is that the cups are lower and her bird doesn't like to go that low to eat. I wonder if that's why Banner isn't eating, although he's not eating on his playstand, either.

At what point should we be concerned that he hasn't ate? I'm not terribly worried as of right now, but I'm guessing if he goes a few days without consuming anything that we should consider some type of action (taking him back to the store, to the vet, etc). They did tell me that he would probably drop some weight. They weighed him before we took him and we are supposed to bring him back in a week regardless to get a follow-up weight.

 

[wenz2712]

I think once he has settled, he will start to eat! The only problem with food dishes being lower than perches is they can poop in their food and water! Maybe you could put a couple of perches just under his dishes!

 

[paulhanlon]

I agree if the perch is level or above the food and water dishes they tend to poop in there food and water I tend to have my perch too bar spaces down so its below the dishes

 

[melissasparrots]

You need to get a gram scale of your own. Relying on someone else to get a gram weight every few days isn't enough. You can pick one up from Office Depot or Office Max or someplace similar. Make a habit of weighing him every day first thing in the morning before he's had a huge meal and do that every day for the first few weeks. Then after your sure his weight has rebounded from the initial move, you can reduce it to weighing every few days or once a week. Its a great tool for catching illness before you have a super sick bird on your hands.
Mine is a digiatal postage scale that converts to grams. How concerned to be kind of depends on how much weight he is loosing and if he continues to just drop after that first day or two or if he levels out. Normal is to drop a lot of weight that first day, then level out after about 2 days and then start to slowly climb back up. So you can see, just getting a gram weight a week later doesn't tell you if he's still falling or if he's going back up because you won't have known how much he lost initially. Which can be about 30-40 grams potentially.

Also check his poops. Typically, if you see a decent curl and quantitiy to the dark fecal portion then it means he's eating enough to keep going. If you start seeing a lot of poops with no dark fecal portion or just a little green smear, then you know he's really not eating enough. A few poops like that for a new bird is normal. Lots of poops like that over more than 24 hours is cause for concern. My personal favorite for getting new babies to eat is cooked and mashy sweet potatoe with some banana and cooked rice or oatmeal mixed in. Cooled to hand-feeding temperature which is about 100-108 degrees or so. Probably about baby bottle temp. If they gave him veggies to eat in the store, he might really go after that stuff. If not, then he might not be very impressed with the sweet 'taters. Offering it from your fingers or from a spoon might make it more special. Just don't make a habit of offering it that way or you'll teach him to be dependent again. A few mouth fulls from the fingers to get him going, and then eating it from a bowl like a grown up would be ideal.