Diet, just want to make sure i have this...

[Sadie]

Less than a month until rocky is home and as you know the diet has been the hardest thing for me! So i just want to make sure this is right. I have a plan to make this easier and if i am wrong please let me know!

I plan on getting about 8 different veggies and 3 different fruits and washing/slicing them. Mix in 1/4 part cooked brown rice, mix it up and freeze it. Get out a serving size(?) once a day and microwave to luke warm.
That will be breakfast
And for the rest of the day golden feast Central american blend mixed with a bit of the colorless organic zupreem.
Give a hard boiled egg with shell once a week.
Does this sound like an acceptable diet?
Thank you!

 

[BillsBirds]

You might like to use an ice cube tray to measure out portions. Seems fine, but, others here who own ekkies can say better.

 

[MikeyTN]

Beta carotene is VERY important in ekkie diet!!!! Stuffs like carrots, broccoli, sweet potatoes, etc. Try to offer a variety instead of restricting to just a few variety. We offer broccoli, zucchini, cucumber, carrots, celery, green beans, snow peas, corn on the cob, apples, oranges, pineapple, strawberry, kiwi, catalope, banana, mango, pomagrante, pears, and water melon. We feed what's in season so we mix them up often. Our ekkies hate leafy greens but if you can get yours to eat them, its great, stuffs like kale, spinach, etc. Dark greens are good! We also cook lentils, sweet potatoes, chicken breast meat, brown rice, egg with shell, and puff popcorn(soak and cook). We also give table spoon worth of seeds mainly millets everyday.

 

[BillsBirds]

Mikey is EXACTLY who I was thinking of!

 

[Sadie]

I didnt plan on making HUGE bags, just a weeks worth at a time and mixing up the kinds of fruits and veggies i included. I planned on making sure there was some sweet potatoes, carrots ect in the mix. Thinking of throwing berries into the frozen mix but also adding in seasonal fresh fruit daily. And hanging dark leaves on the cage as more of a "treat". My main concern was making sure this would be a safe diet day to day.
Thank you! And i appreciate the corrections when im wrong!

 

[MikeyTN]

I shy away from pellets from the excess stuffs they put in there that can cause more harm then good for ekkies. Trust me, our monthly food budget for birds is high! I just ordered 70lbs of zupreem pellets and 15lbs roudybush nectar and it was $221 and that's with shipping, $35 higher then what we used to pay because my friend stopped selling pellets, his price was unbeatable....not including seeds and fresh stuffs we buy weekly...along with all natural dog and cat food we buy...lol....

 

[Pedro]

Less than a month until rocky is home and as you know the diet has been the hardest thing for me! So i just want to make sure this is right. I have a plan to make this easier and if i am wrong please let me know!

I plan on getting about 8 different veggies and 3 different fruits and washing/slicing them. Mix in 1/4 part cooked brown rice, mix it up and freeze it. Get out a serving size(?) once a day and microwave to luke warm.
That will be breakfast
And for the rest of the day golden feast Central american blend mixed with a bit of the colorless organic zupreem.
Give a hard boiled egg with shell once a week.
Does this sound like an acceptable diet?
Thank you!

Sadie I know I live in Australia & have a totally different way of feeding my Eclectus. My parrots are always offered fresh raw veg. I never cook anything for them & i shy away from brown rice & pasta.

There is some research being done here by one of our renouned Avian Vets & A Parrot Behaviour Consultant regarding diet & companion parrot behavior. I have just read an article in the latest Parrot Society of Au. mag written by Pamela Clark & she also seems to back up the claims.

Here are a few extract from the article, Dr Jamie Lindstrom from the animal clinic Ohio. explains as we provide these high energy, high carb. high lipid diets, we also provide these birds with high energy. If the parrot has insufficent opportunities to expend this energy, it leads to some of the aberrant behaviours, such as screaming & biting, that we see in these birds. Often eliminating these foods from the diet results in a much calmer parrot.

According to Dr Fern VanSant, there are two key issues that we missed when deciding what & how to feed our parrots. The first is that parrots in the wild are normally "turned off" or reproductively inactive during most of the year.

The second is that the "surroundings of abundance" which we provide in captivity often have the effect of keeping companion parrots reproductively active throughout the year.

She writes in her article "Hormonal Behaviour: As pets, the conditions of abundance food, bonded owners, comfortable cages & considerable physical contact seem to initiate breeding behaviours that become long term drives. Without the naturally occurring environmental pressure of dwindling food supplies, changing conditions, and competition for resources that limit breeding behaviour in wild populations, breeding behaviours & hormonal drives persist unchecked.

It goes on to say which foods are to be avioded are seed mixes, nuts, bread, pasta, rice. snack foods, cheese, cereals & dried fruits. When actually we should only be feeding twice a day & the recommended diet is a balanced diet of fruit & veg, sprouts & high quality formulated food.

I wish i could post the whole article.

I know this link has been posted heaps of times before but here it is again. I also know your bird is only a baby but if feeding a healthy balanced diet will make a huge difference as your bird matures, maybe you will be able to avoid all those horrible hormonal behaviours. Trust me i do know it works.

diets

 

[MikeyTN]

On the reproductive part, I only feed fruits and veggies plus pellets with no seeds available to my big parrots. It doesn't seem to stop them from wanting to mate! So far after a year of feeding my ekkies consistently of the diet I described above have proved no ill effect and my female have not been hormonal at all. Brown rice and such are fed occasionally not on a daily diet. I do agree they should not depend on seed only diet but cut to a minimal as I put it to one table spoon. Sprouted seeds is very nutritious of course. I only offer my birds fresh food, never frozen. But some people do to save time. At least they're trying to feed healthy in my book. We prefer to do it fresh daily.

I may not be a doctor but I do observe my birds to make sure they're properly fed and healthy. I used to sit out in the woods to observe wild birds to feed and raise chicks when I was young. I may not have been a scholar but I did my research and observe my birds to give them what I believe is good for them. My family and friends plus anyone who knows me well have said it's a shame I did not go to college when I was accepted at Yale. I take what the study says and the doctors say with a grain of salt and personally research it myself so I don't take them to be absolute fact until proven.

 

[kc_y0]

I feel that sprouts are very important too and different types of beans! Cooked chickpeas and beans are really good. I feed my Eccy twice a day with fresh fruit & veg and at night I give her a small bowl of seeds and pellets for bed time. I think for most vegies you wont have to cook them but you have to cook/steam sweet potato or pumpkin. As Pedro said we may do it a bit differently over here but I offer most things to Audrey raw.

 

[Sadie]

i was just collecting a bunch of information and trying to piece it together for what would work for me. I had quite a few recommend brown rice daily as well as sweet potatoes and carrots. I thought that pre preparing the food would ensure he would get a variety every day. And as far as the golden feast and dye free zureem, should i can that idea and just feed the fruits and veg multiple times a day.

This is what gets me. i take a diet off of someone that has been breeding eclectus for over 30 yrs and i get from you guys its wrong! lol
im gonna try to get a hold of our future vet and get a 3rd point of view. Im so worried about not doing the right thing.

 

[kc_y0]

Sadie don't worry too much, you will probably get lots of different opinions on diets. As long as you stick to the main basics of an eccy diet (Fruit and veg) I am sure you will be fine and find what works for you and your bird personally. Its good that you are being very prepared though! I had a plan set up of how I would feed my bird but I threw that out the window after I got her lol! You kind of learn as you go too and you find out what your bird likes and what is the best for him nutritional wise.

 

[Sadie]

Thanks! im really hoping i am just over thinking this! why cant they be like the others with food! lol i do appreciate the help and i hope i didnt come off as rude in the last post. it just seems like the more i think i have it figured out, the more wrong i am lol

 

[MikeyTN]

Have you talk with your breeder what he's feeding?

 

[Sadie]

he is feeding the golden feast, seeping it then mixing in the organic zupreem. along with introducing a large variety of fresh fruits and vegetables

 

[MikeyTN]

If that's what he's feeding, go visit his birds. View their condition, if they look healthy then go with what he's feeding. That's the simple solution. Then modify as you go if you needed to.

 

[Sadie]

Well he is in florida so there wont be any visiting. Based on the pics he is a very beautiful boy and the parents seem to glow. I was just worried that regardless of what the outside looks like, i may be doing something that isnt to good for the insides...

 

[kc_y0]

No don't worry I stressed out about it too, with everything that you read and how complex their dietary needs are its easy to get worried!

 

[Sadie]

thanks! i think i am just going to calm down for now. do the freezing weeks worth and adding the golden feast and egg, alter it to make it work then in a few months go for another check up to make sure he is looking healthy. that way i will know for sure if what im doing is working

 

[Sadie]

i think i will mainly do raw in the mornings, but some school days are more hectic than others and there are a few days we have dr appts in the early mornings. so i want to be prepared. I think giving a variety will be easier that way too.