by Pajarita » Wed Dec 30, 2020 7:29 pm
Well, I wish you had actually answered the diet question because, when it comes to all parrots and ekkies in particular, it is pretty much the most important thing there is. Avian vets (and I am putting them down, mind you, I have a very good one and had other two that were excellent!) do not study parrot nutrition -even if that was possible, given all the different species and different dietary ecologies they have. Their text books have a ridiculously short chapter on avian nutrition which, by necessity, is incredibly generic because in order for it to be actually useful, it would have to cover all the different types of diets birds have, from omnivorous, to carnivorous, to insectivorous, to pollen and nectar feeders, to frugivores, etc. Ekkies are, by far, the most difficult parrot to feed correctly and the sad thing is that even when you feed them wrong, they still show blood chems within normal levels. And the reason why I know this is because I had a parrot that I KNEW was sick, took him to the avian vet with the oldest and largest practice, a professor of avian medicine at the university which did complete blood work on all three occasions and pronounced the bird healthy on all three. The bird died about one month after he was diagnosed by another avian vet with liver malfunction and about two months after the last visit to the avian med professor who had pronounced him healthy (because all his blood work came back within normal levels - I did not know about bile acids test at that point in time so I never asked him to run one). So, I am sorry, but, when it comes to birds, blood work -which is what avian vets go by- is not always an accurate diagnostic tool.
Now, I don't need to tell you that the light schedule is bad, it's a human schedule and not an avian one - and ekkies cannot be kept at a human light schedule. Period. Ekkies are one of the most hormonal parrots there is - in the wild, the females have been observed spending up to nine months in the nest -that's how bad it is! And that's why the precisely right diet (super low in protein, no fat, super high moisture and super high fiber -natural fiber, not the one added to pellets but I assume you don't feed her pellets as they are a complete no-no for ekkies) and a super strict solar schedule with two hours of twilight exposure both at dawn and dusk is imperative to keep them from becoming overly hormonal. See, the thing is that there is no real alternative because Lupron does not work in the long run and it might end up making things worse. I don't know if you know how Lupron acts on the body but, in case you don't, let me explain. Lupron was originally created for mammals -specifically as a dog contraceptive. And the way it works is that it makes the body produce a HUGE amount of sexual hormones - so much that the body realizing something is terribly wrong, shuts down production altogether. It does this by messing up the endocrine system which is what governs the reproductive system. But birds are not like dogs. Dogs produce sexual hormones all the time, just like people do, only the actual production follows cycles so, when you stop production in a dog, it's kind of okey because as soon as the 'season' is over, you don't give it to the dog and their endocrine system goes back on track. But birds are completely different, they do not produce sexual hormones all the time and their 'seasons' are directly related to environmental clues so, given the wrong (or the right, depending on how you look at it) clues, they will start producing sexual hormones and if you don't change the environmental clues (light, diet, weather), they will continue producing them month after month, year after year, creating a physically unnatural situation where their gonads grow to a size not contemplated by nature even pushing internal organs out of their place (with the corresponding inflammation and pain that this would create - male birds have peed blood because of this). So, when we talk about an overly hormonal bird, we are talking not only about a bird that is HIGHLY frustrated sexually and gets no relief for it but also about an animal that is in chronic pain. That's why they scream, pluck, become aggressive, etc. And I think that is what is happening to your bird.
So the solution to the problem is very easy and very hard at the same time:
1) super strict solar schedule with 2 hours of dawn and dusk with no artificial lights and complete darkness for sleep (and I do mean COMPLETE darkness because there are studies that show that the merest amount of indirect light activates their glands).
2) super strict fresh food diet: raw produce and more raw produce, no pellets, no seeds, only grains and cooked at that.
3) keep the house as cool as you can during the winter months.
4) flight as much as possible (because the only thing that dissipates bad hormones -sexual, stress- is flight)