You described it very well “hyper hyper hyper hyper OMG will she ever quit, or asleep and recharging for her next bout of hyper-ness.” This is completely the same with Mathew 🤣.Aaaaaaahhhhhh lorikeets - "hyper" is their default setting I'm afraid!!
My Lilly has only two speeds. She is either hyper hyper hyper hyper OMG will she ever quit, or asleep and recharging for her next bout of hyper-ness. Unfortunately for me she combines the insane hyperactivity with an insatiable need to nest and lay infertile eggs which brings even more hazards! In an effort to "try" (hahahahaha!!!!!) to curtail the worst of her excesses I cut down on the amount of fruit she gets and give more leafy greens such as kale, broccoli, broccolini, bok choy etc which fortunately she LOVES! But she still does require liquid nectar daily as all lorikeets do - millions of years of evolution makes that an inescapable necessity with lorikeets. There are pelleted lorikeet foods on the market but in the opinion of world renowned aviculturalist Rosemary Low they would merely result in your bird feeling constipated for it's entire life - and I agree with her! So my Lilly gets wet mix for her breakfast and I swap it out for dry nectar powder for the remainder of the day.
The other thing to try is to get Mathew to work for his food, which is a great way to both occupy his brain and work off excess energy. These videos from my local bird vet might give you some ideas how you might go about it.....
Foraging is admittedly more easily achieved with seed or pellet eating parrots and is a little more challenging for lories. Unfortunately I've had limited success with foraging toys for my Lilly because she is just too tiny to manipulate them, but you may have more luck with Mathew being so much bigger.
Yes I give him the nectar twice a day for breakfast and dinner. During the day, fruits & dates.
Really thank you LaManukaOh good, I'm so glad my info was useful for you!
Yes I would recommend cutting back on the fruit. Not cutting it out entirely, but particularly the dates which would be very high in sugars which further fuel that crazy high octane behaviour. I would also suggest that you try to find a commercially prepared dry powdered nectar and have it available for Mathew during the day, particularly while you go through this transition with his diet. Dried nectar is great because lorikeets can easily get stressed if they don't have access to food, and unlike the wet mixes and fruits it can be left in the cage all day without concern about spoilage. I generally leave Lilly's wet mix with her for about 3 or 4 hours each morning, then switch it out for dry and she nibbles on that as well as her fruit and veg during the day. It's important too to keep their water dish well away from food sources so that there's less chance of them fouling it by flinging food into it!
The way you present vegetables to Mathew may make all the difference when it comes to whether he decides to try eating them or not too. He not find a dish of chopped up vegetables all that appealing, but if you were to suspend a big bunch of kale, silverbeet or spinach from the roof of his cage and he could swing around from it while eating, he might just get a lot of fun out of that plus some good nutrition at the same time! Lorikeets in the wild love to swing and hang upside down from branches while they eat so this would also be a source of some fun and play for him.
You won't ever really be able to stop the hyperactive insanity, it's just the way lorikeets are programmed and one of the big reasons why we love them so much, even if it does drive us a little batty sometimes
Hii LaManuka!That's great! I'm so glad Mathew got some extra fun out of his veg! Hanging upside down is a pretty natural position for a lorikeet - Lilly even hangs herself upside down from the bars of her cage when she's lapping up her wet mix rather than just standing on a perch or the side of the dish, so it would seem to be their preference.
As far as the dry nectar powder is concerned, it may just be a case of trying different brands before you find one that Mathew likes. There are a couple of brands that Lilly won't touch, but one that she absolutely loves, so it's worth perhaps experimenting with some different manufacturers. Same with other parrot species and pellets really, some like Harrisons, some like Tops or Roudybush, it all comes down to individual preference. I'm not personally sure about bee pollen though. Lorikeets in the wild do eat pollen from native flowers and I've used it as an additive to Lilly's dry mix but have never used it exclusively. I'm not sure that I would to be honest. Living in Australia I provide Lilly with natural, native blossoms for forage almost every day so she would get some pollen that way. But I will try to remember to ask my bird vet about it next time I see him
Just for a bit of fun I've attached a (very short) video of Lilly attacking her bunches of broccolini that I suspended from the roof of her cage for her ...
Unfortunately the lighting is bad because it was so bright outside, and it's only short because every time I aim the camera at her she'd much prefer to come over and jump on me to investigate it instead, but you get the idea of how much she enjoys climbing up and around her veg rather than just having a dish of food presented to her. I hope maybe you can get a video of Mathew enjoying his greens too, I'd love to see it!
Welcome back eman! I had wondered where you had disappeared to
Matthew and Mia certainly look very fit and healthy and enjoying their - is that mint? I must try that on Lilly, apparently it may have some calming properties and heaven knows she needs a bit of calming sometimes! Certainly climbing and hanging from things like your cargo net seems to suit the habits of lories far more than just eating straight from a dish or on a horizontal perch, they really are built for all that hanging and climbing around more than just about any other type of parrot.
I must admit I was not aware of the issue with beak hypertrophy. Actually Lilly has an appointment with her vet tomorrow for an annual wellness check so I will try to remember to ask them about it. Diets of lories kept in captivity will inevitably vary from those of their wild cousins so it could be that the nectars fed may have a different impact on them. I will let you know what they advise me.
Good to see you back eman, and I hope you will share many more pics and videos of Mathew and Mia, they are just gorgeous
Thankfully she LOVES chewing and shredding her leafy greens and broccolini so hopefully she won’t miss it that much. Actually she had a very nice, calm (for her anyway!) day yesterday but she may well get all hyper again this week as it’s supposed to rain a lot, and if anything puts her ovaries into overdrive, that will be it!! Rain makes her think that lots of food will be available shortly so it’s a good time to go lay some eggs and it is virtually impossible to convince her otherwise!Oh poor little Lilly ☹️ Hope everything goes beyond the perfect for her and you. Didn’t really know about the relationship between rain and laying eggs. Rain season didn’t start in Kuwait, and this winter will be the first for me and them together.Oh that Lilly, she is SUCH a worry, let me tell you! Sadly she is in the throes of a very hyper breeding season just now and her little body is busily converting everything she eats into potential eggs! So we are having to even further tweak her diet to reduce her sugar intake, so she’s not getting fruit at all any more
I spoke to my vet about the beak hypertrophy that you mentioned. The advice is that it is not linked to feeding wet mixes in lorikeets, but rather that it’s caused by nutritional imbalances that can cause beak and claws to overgrow. So I suppose in the case of lorikeets, if one was being exclusively fed a poor quality wet mix and nothing else you might expect to see problems, but if your lories are getting a balanced diet with plenty of fresh veg then you should not have too many issues.
Lovely to have you and your flock back, eman, and hope to see you around again very soon
