Overweight Rose Breasted Cockatoo

Last Updated on October 3, 2023 by Mitch Rezman

Hi from Arizona,

I have a Rose Breasted Cockatoo named Poppy. He will be 17 in April and I would like some advice on controlling his weight.

His maintenance diet is Zupreem Fruit blend.

He also gets cooked food with various kinds of beans, broccoli, egg (white only), some fruit like a berry or piece of mango or apple. I have also used Higgins Worldly Cuisines but he tends to avoid eating the lentils.

He could probably use more exercise time on his play stand but there has to be someone to watch that he doesn’t fly off and get into mischief. I use foraging toys but he masters them very quickly so not much foraging.

On your web site I saw some coconut oil, or palm oil, I think, that was helpful for controlling weight. Do you have any suggestions that would help and not destroy his wonderful personality. He is extremely intelligent, has a vocabulary of ~400 words and often uses complete sentences.

Thank you,

Carol Justice

HI Carol

what is Poppy’s current weight?

Mitch

His last weight was 516 grams. He is a large bird 13 inches from head to tail.

Hi Carol

Your bird is significantly over weight, the average weight for a Galah’ is 280 – 390 grams – Poppy is the average length for Rose Breasted C2 but weighs as much as an Umbrella. In that the number represents a 25% overage I would encourage a vet visit at your earliest convenience

In that I don’t know if your bird is over sized or over weight, I’m concerned about any recommendations. If your bird is over sized thats fine but but a 100 grams overwight could be an indication of a tumor, fatty liver disease or any number of maladies that only a vet check could determine. I don;t want to give you exercise tips and have your bird keel over because of high cholesterol – sorry.

that said, and Zupreem will argue it, but Zupreeem is high in sugar. their argument is that it’s no more than bird get from eating fruit in the wild. My argument is it’s an “added ingredient” sugar will add weight to humans or birds. You might want to move to Harrisons High potency http://goo.gl/TEtw7q

Re :Harrisons High potency

USES:

• Diet Conversion: All birds should start out and remain on a High Potency Formula for a period of at least 6 months.

• Special needs: for birds that are molting, overweight, underweight, particularly active, housed in a cold climate, recovering from an illness or affected by liver or kidney disease.

• Weaning Birds: Feed High Potency Formula for at least 6-9 months.

• Breeding Birds: Birds s

After 6 months change to Harrisons Adult lifetime

Best

MitchR