Vet visit & one month at home update

[Geslina]

Ava had her vet visit on Tuesday, & seems to be a healthy girl. She’s a good weight, & blood work came back normal. I’m waiting on the results of her Psittacosis test (& will be for a couple more weeks), before she comes out of quarantine. I’ll be so happy when her flight feathers come back in. Poor babe has a very bad wing clip, & her secondary feathers were clipped short as well. She still tries to fly, but it scares me, as she drops like a rock. We try to prevent it the best we can, so she doesn’t hurt herself. She’s converting to her new diet very well. She is fully converted to her chop now, & is still working on her TOPs pellets, but she has started to eat them on their own, little by little. I’m very proud of her, as her diet was pretty junk food heavy when we got her a month ago. She’s a sweet girl, & we’re so happy to have her with us! Sweet chop face this morning.

I am about to make my 100th attempt with pellets. My parrot is 38, and since I got him in 93, he would never ever eat pellets. I have tried every type, every brand, every method of converting him to pellets. I feed him about 8 to 10 nutriberries a day,, a rice veggie mix, fresh fruit and vegetables, and anything we are eating. Including things a few times a week that he probably should not have, like mashed potatoes and pasta. Nothing suspicious ever showed up in blood work, but X-rays for a recent injury show early signs of cardiovascular disease, so I really need to make some serious changes. If he won’t eat the pellets, maybe I can just restrict the table food.

 

[nkrbkr]

I am about to make my 100th attempt with pellets. My parrot is 38, and since I got him in 93, he would never ever eat pellets. I have tried every type, every brand, every method of converting him to pellets. I feed him about 8 to 10 nutriberries a day,, a rice veggie mix, fresh fruit and vegetables, and anything we are eating. Including things a few times a week that he probably should not have, like mashed potatoes and pasta. Nothing suspicious ever showed up in blood work, but X-rays for a recent injury show early signs of cardiovascular disease, so I really need to make some serious changes. If he won’t eat the pellets, maybe I can just restrict the table food.

Have you tried birdie bread to get him to eat pellets? It works very well. I have a recipe I can send, and tell you what I did with Ava. She loves her pellets now.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

I think it's more likely that Max has early cardiovascular disease from lack of exercise than a poor diet. Wild parrots fly a lot. Even the most active captive parrots are perch potatoes in comparison. They don't eat pellets in the wild- they're manufactured processed food. You could probably improve his diet but that doesn't necessarily mean he must eat pellets.
Its also possible that most parrots in their senior years develop early heart disease. Is he overweight? Maybe even wild Amazons do if they make it to Max's age. Max is obviously a very healthy strong bird to survive the surgery so well at his age. You've taken great care of him.

 

[Macawdamia Nut]

Good luck with the pellet conversion! My bird will sit and look at a dish of pellets for hours.

Reminds me of when I was a child and my mother was serving stew, meat loaf or corned beef. My brother and I would sit at the table for hours and devise ways to make the food disappear: Hiding it in napkins or baked potatoes, stuffing it in our cheeks and rushing to the bathroom for disposal in the toilet, concocting stories of how our orthodontist prohibited that type of food, feeding it to the dog…. Any excuse to avoid eating that nastiness!

My bird won’t even eat Nutriberries. He has a good appetite, but doesn’t seem to eat anything like the amount of food that other birds eat. Some days he eats a lot and other days not too much.

At 55-ish, he is doing all right. He is one of the most senior parrots at our vet’s practice. She has seen macaws make it to their mid-60s, so we are getting up there. I am hoping he breaks some records and makes it into his 70s. We are growing older together.

Let us know how Max is healing and how his diet conversion is going. I would be tempted to spoil my bird rotten during a period of convalescence.

 

[rheashard2]

I agree with above 150%!!! Trying to get companion birds to eat healthy closely resembles getting a toddler to eat veggies. I found this site looking for a way to get Nameliss to eat the dreads. Broccoli, carrots, and so much more. I had the impression that she thought veggies were poisonous. She threw them out with minimal contact. I never had problems with her eating pellets. There were tips here that I tried along with some recipes. Now I have a chop combo she looks forward to every morning. She waits at her chop stop while I get the stare. She even asks for chop during the day. Don't give up. Patience combined with guile and a heavy amount of trickery is needed to get parrots to eat healthy.

 

[Geslina]

Have you tried birdie bread to get him to eat pellets? It works very well. I have a recipe I can send, and tell you what I did with Ava. She loves her pellets now.

No, I haven’t tried that and yes, would love a recipe!

 

[nkrbkr]

No, I haven’t tried that and yes, would love a recipe!

Here’s the recipe! Both of my birds love it, and they receive it as a treat now, periodically. It calls for TOPs pellets, which is what my birds eat (although you could use any kind of pellet). I think I read in another thread that you’ve been able to get your guy to eat a few TOPs pellets already, correct? If so, I would sprinkle more pellets on top of the bread, and kind of mash them in, to make the bread more pellet heavy. The idea is that you gradually reduce the amount of bread, and increase the amount pellets, until you’re just feeding pellets.

Ava, my Amazon, needed a bit of an extra push to start eating more of the pellets, after she was eating the bread well. TOPs makes their own bird bread mix, which is made of the same ingredients as their pellets. I would put a small chunk of that in her bowl, along with the homemade bird bread and pellets, and it was the extra push she needed to realize she liked the taste of the pellets. She eats them on their own now, and loves them. She was very much on an unhealthy diet before I converted her. It took me 3-4 weeks to get her fully converted to the plain pellets, as it’s a gradual process. If you try the bread, let me know how it goes. I’m happy to answer questions!

 

[wrench13]

As far as people food, We only give Salty a small dime size piece of pizza crust or same size piece of pasta, or a veg piece after its been washed off. A chicken bone occasionally. Thats it.

 

[nkrbkr]

As far as people food, We only give Salty a small dime size piece of pizza crust or same size piece of pasta, or a veg piece after its been washed off. A chicken bone occasionally. Thats it.

My birds don’t get any people food either, as tempting as it is to share with them. Occasionally, I’ll give Ava a very thin slice of an apple if I’m eating one, or a grape. I don’t want any Amazon eggs!

 

[rheashard2]

Nameless says so pitifully....is it that good. She'll bounce foot to foot and repeat it multiple times. It's hard for me to resist. She gets rare pizza crust or fast food French fries as a special treat. If I'm eating people only foods, I have a bird safe duplicate. I find that so much easier than being hard hearted.