Last Updated on by Catherine Tobsing
Jerilyn called with a problem.
Her Sun Conure would dump his dry food every day.
It didn’t matter what she fed him, as soon as he received it, he would start to toss every bit until the dish was empty and the food was everywhere BUT the bowl. The cage floor, the outside of the cage floor. What a mess.
I asked the usual questions: how much are you feeding him, is he getting any sunflower seeds in his mix, are you giving him a tiny bit or a whole bowl?
The reasons for these questions:
If a parrot is fed sunflower seeds in its seed mix, the bird may hyper-focus on them and will dig until nothing is in the bowl “just in case” there is one remaining sunflower seed. In those situations, they may toss everything in their dish. We recommend that the owners only put a tablespoon of the mix into the birds dish at a time, OR, stop feeding sunflower seed mixes.
Jerilyn said it wasn’t the sunflower seed problem. So I told her most likely, the bird was seeing its own reflection in the bottom of the shiny dish and was trying to get to it.
So, my suggestion was to order ceramic dishes that fit the same bird cage rings. So she did.
Today Jerilyn called and said “It worked, the food is still in the dish and he is eating”. “His vet was no help when I asked about this problem”.
Thankfully she has a Prevue Select Cage as they have a universal dish ring that can hold two depths of stainless steel dishes AND also a heavy white ceramic dish. She was able to just order it and solve the problem.
Not all cage manufacturers offer these options.
For cages that are not made by Prevue We also offer bolt-on ceramic dishes in 3 sizes and two colors here.
They can be installed in any cage easily.
They may need to remove the stainless steel dish options entirely and then use ceramic dishes/crocks that come with their own bolt on rings.
Regards
Catherine
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