Birds Can Be Difficult When Trying New Foods
Dear Nora How can you get your parrot to eat pellets? Birds can be difficult when trying new foods, I am reaching out to the company for their suggestions on…
Dear Nora How can you get your parrot to eat pellets? Birds can be difficult when trying new foods, I am reaching out to the company for their suggestions on…
Hypothetical – a 21st-century genie sits down next to you on a park bench. He looks pretty normal and explains that the whole genie thing has evolved along with modern society.
The dapper young lad named Gene (really?) goes on to say;
How to improve your bird’s health with Scenic Bird Food and good fruit &
vegetable selections!
• Place Scenic Bird Food in a separate cup from your bird’s normal food and leave it there all day and night.
• Replace with fresh food daily.
• Keep the cup full.
• Only after your bird is eating Scenic Bird Food should you place it in the normal food cup.
Dear Theresa
Your bird passed today? Oh my. I am so sorry to hear this. It is never easy to lose a pet, they are so much a part of the family. You have our deepest sympathies.
Theresa replied
I’m a bit at a loss. We’ve had her for twenty-five years. With the exception of some arthritis in her foot, she’s been healthy as can be. Just back from a vet check about a month ago…Good eater always eating the things good for her…Saturday I woke up to uncover her cage only to find she’s thrown up a cooked food I got from parrot island. It was a pea soup blend.
December 10th of last year I sprained my ankle. I finally got my boot on that foot for the first time last week on 1/24/17. In less than a month Medicare will be paying all my medical expenses (in conjunction with a supplemental plan F policy). I can relate to getting old. I look old. I have a long gray beard. Look at me and you know that I’m old.
Not so much with birds
For those of you that have stuck with your birds through the screaming biting and destruction – kudos! You’ll learn how much life bird’s can bring into a home.
My name is MitchR. I am an avian influencer. Full transparency – my day gig is selling products just for pet birds – I spend approximately 20% of my work week scanning about 40 Facebook bird groups and niche (species-specific) forums like this. The content I write has one purpose which is to make you a better pet bird keeper.
I think serving dishes filled with any sort of commercial bird food without offering foraging and enrichment opportunities 24/7 in and out of the cage is the single biggest problem with getting our birds to eat properly.
A woman replying in a Facebook thread about her self-mutilating parrot “My vet said that it’s become a habit that’s it very hard to break”.
My response was “Ask your vet why these habits don’t develop in the wild”?
Another woman had spent $4000 between veterinarian bills and behaviorists. Her bird was still plucking. In the thread that evolved it turns out that her cages were filled primarily with eucalyptus perches.
Although eucalyptus can be safe it also has a great many toxins that can be lethal to a bird. She also related that her bird got about one hour of daylight – none of this came up in the conversation with her veterinarian or behaviorist.
Americans have the ACLU – Captive birds in America have Windy City Parrot.
Part of a call from Hawaii at the Birdie Boutique
“I suggest72 hours of constant light, meaning the bird would be in its cage for 3 days, with the lights on”.
Cage birdkeepers response “she’ll never go for something like that“
My email response
As an advocate for pet birds, I wanted to follow up on your lovebird’s reproductive issues.
If a child is sick, he or she does not determine whether or not to accept care.
Although you state your bird would “have nothing to do with it” – she can easily be locked in a cage for three days for her own good so as to extend her life.
Short answer – yes you can feed all size birds the same foods BUT – you have to understand how they eat. Our cockatiel would eat everything from a plate including picking from a steak bigger than her.
Peaches our Senegal likes to hold food in her zygodactyl foot thus she requires manageable chunks of “parrot size” food with larger pieces and larger pellets. We feed her Higgins Safflower Gold. A healthy blend of seeds, nuts, fruits, and pellets. All Higgins products include Intune Pellets sized accordingly to the species of parrot.
My bird(s) will get proper lighting using a timer to provide an accurate light cycle
I will work with my flighted bird to make him or her a better flyer. If my bird is not flighted I will consider allowing the wings to grow out for a more confident bird that screams less. (more…)