EATNG

[chrismee1]

Hi

Can anyone help please, i have bought a 6 month old ringneck parrot, he enjoys nuts and seeds but will not touch his fruit or veg, i have given him cooked and raw, im worried it will effect his health, any advice please?

Chris

[Wolf]

How long have you had him? How long has he been not eating? If the answer is only for a couple of days, them don't worry too much, just make sure that you give him food and clean water. This is not uncommon for a new bird to refuse to eat for a couple of days when they are first brought home.

[Harpmaker]

To get a parrot to try something new, make a big production about how delicious it is as you eat it in front of them. Your IRN is still young, and needs its parents -and that's YOU now- to tell them what is good to eat. If it doesn't see it being eaten it won't know it's food.

Start with soft foods like mashed bananas, plain oatmeal, or baby food. Later you can try different preparations. For instance, my bird prefers her carrots grated, yams cooked and sprinkled with cinnamon, and fruits raw. She eats the seeds off the strawberries first. It took months of giving her bits of raw broccoli every day before I saw her eat it. Dried fruits are her favorites-especially raisins, blueberries, and cherries, but avoid fruits with added sugar(cranberries) and with sulfur-based preservatives(apricots), and only give a little at a time, because they are high in calories.

Take your time-your bird is not old enough to have health problems from too many seeds. But changing to a better diet is an excellent idea.

[chrismee1]

How long have you had him? How long has he been not eating? If the answer is only for a couple of days, them don't worry too much, just make sure that you give him food and clean water. This is not uncommon for a new bird to refuse to eat for a couple of days when they are first brought home.

Hi,

Thank you for you reply, he is ok with his eating now but a much more worrying problem is that he has plucked all the feathers on his neck, legs and chest, i have had him just over 1 week, plenty of attention and playing but now i am very concerned about it, have bought more toys for his cage, i now spray a light mist of water 3 times a day which has helped very slightly, i spoke to his former owner and she said he did it a little bit when she bought him but after a few days its passed and was fine, do you think its time for the vets? the problem with that is he is scared of hands, fine with arms but will not allow hands on him, i will ruin all the hard work in gaining his confidence in me but i his health is more important

[chrismee1]

To get a parrot to try something new, make a big production about how delicious it is as you eat it in front of them. Your IRN is still young, and needs its parents -and that's YOU now- to tell them what is good to eat. If it doesn't see it being eaten it won't know it's food.

Start with soft foods like mashed bananas, plain oatmeal, or baby food. Later you can try different preparations. For instance, my bird prefers her carrots grated, yams cooked and sprinkled with cinnamon, and fruits raw. She eats the seeds off the strawberries first. It took months of giving her bits of raw broccoli every day before I saw her eat it. Dried fruits are her favorites-especially raisins, blueberries, and cherries, but avoid fruits with added sugar(cranberries) and with sulfur-based preservatives(apricots), and only give a little at a time, because they are high in calories.

Take your time-your bird is not old enough to have health problems from too many seeds. But changing to a better diet is an excellent idea.

Thank you for your response.x

[Wolf]

Plucking is never an easy issue to deal with as the reason for it is either medical and requires a visit to the bird doctor or it is a psychological issue. on the psychological side of this issue boredom, loneliness and stress seem to be the main causes for this problem.
So how much time do you spend with him on a daily basis? When you spend this time together, what do you do? How much out of cage free time does he have daily? What kind of schedule does he have on a day to day basis? What times does he get up and go to bed? What kind of lighting is he exposed to? What does he actually eat out of what you give him? And what is his feeding schedule?
Now I am sure that you have asked these questions or similar ones to yourself trying to figure this issue out, and I apologise for having to ask them but to be of help I need a little better picture of his life as it is now.
Also, I would recommend a visit to the bird doctor to rule out any medical issues.
Hopefully we can fix this in short order as no one like to see their pretty bird suffering and/ or reduced to running around in his underwear.

[chrismee1]

Hi,
i leave the cage door open all day, i let him jump on my arm and up my shoulder, really seems to enjoy it but the last 2 days he has got even more nervous than usual, his poo is almost water but i am hoping that is because he has found a love for apples and eats plenty, he is also rubbing his beak on his perch, i am certain it is stress, we have him in perfect condition a week ago and since he arrived he has gone down hill, i spend all evening with him, 4-5 hours and also a few hours in the day when im not at work, my wife is also here for him, i have bought him a mirror and to be honest it all went wrong from there, could that be it?

[Wolf]

Start by getting rid of the mirror and cut back on the apples. If the cause of the watery poop is the apples it will clear up really fast, if it doesn't return to normal poop by morning take him to the vet.
Don't worry about him wiping his beak on the perch, it is normal, he has to clean it somehow and this is how they clean it and also how they keep it trimmed down.
Read this post, on the second page is a list of safe and toxic things including foods and also household products that you need to be aware of.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12521
This is the best list that I have come across.

[Wolf]

Ok, I'm back, I didn't have time to finish with my last post.
Some birds recognize that the bird in the mirror is themselves, but some birds do not and as a result they get stressed over the bird in the mirror. Could this cause your bird to pluck? In my opinion it could.
Apples and most fruits are high in water content and should be introduced slowly into their diet, same as any other food should be. When ever you change your diet it causes changes in the way your body processes the new food and this is no different for them.
From what you have told me, except for the mirror, I am not seeing anything that should be causing this bird undue stress. However, also based on what you have said, he is stressing about something, that is unless I am misunderstanding the statement that he is getting more nervous than usual. I am at this point pretty well certain that you have no idea as to what is causing the stress and that it is simply an unintentional error on your part.
So you need to take a closer look at what you are doing with him and start watching him for any indication that he does not want to do something that you are asking him to do. birds do not live in a heirarchial type of social system, one in which there is a top bird calling the shots for the rest of the flock. They live in a flock where each bird does as it chooses to do. This works quite well for them as they are naturally non aggressive in nature. This is different than what we are accustomed to and different than most of the other animals that we choose for pets and it require us to learn to think a little differently than we normally do.
Let us look at something simple, in order to show a comparison. We want our dog to come to us and so we call the dog by name and ask it to come to us. The dog does not come to us and so we attach a leash to the dogs collar and try again and again the dog ignores our request to come to us, so we pull on the leash a little and call the dog again and release the pressure. We use a tug and release method to get the dog to come to us even though he clearly doesn't want to. The dog is fine with this and soon learns to come when called. Not a problem as the dog normally lives with this type of social structure in the pack as well.
Now we want our bird to come to us and the equivalent to calling the dog, for a bird is the request to step up. We ask our bird to step up and he doesn't. We could wait a couple of minutes and ask for the bird to step up and maybe offer it a treat to do so and the bird steps up. Or we could say to ourselves that we asked for the step up and so the bird must step up and so we push our finger into the bird putting him off balance to get him to step up and so he complies. The bird has only learned that you will try to force him and you lose a little trust and the next time that you ask for the step up and he doesn't you again push him with your finger and instead of stepping up as you expected he moves away and you end up chasing him around with your hand to get him to step up which eventually he does. Now the next time that you ask for the step up and try the bird tries to move away, you follow and the bird bites. you now have a bird that has learned that you will try to force it to do what you want and so now not only does he no longer trust you, he now is afraid of your hands.
Now I am not saying that you are doing this or that you have done this, but if he is afraid of hands it is possible that someone has done something similar to him. but, I did want to show the difference in the way that birds think, from the way that dogs and ourselves think, and they difference in what is learned by this difference in how we think about things.

[chrismee1]

extremely helpful, thank you very much for taking the time to reply, i will take this on board.

Kind regards

Chris