by Pajarita » Sat Oct 18, 2014 10:55 am
Awwww, what a pretty girl! I am so glad that they would consider leaving her with you! People usually think that love is more than enough but they forget that to love is a verb and it implies action, not just feelings. The right kind of love is the one that puts work, time and resources into keeping the object of our affections healthy and happy.
Now, as to her diet, the problem is that you are feeding her way too many seeds. The night portion of seeds should be 1/4 cup, not 1/2 or 3/4 because the idea is for her not to starve but also not for her to get so full at night that she can wait until the following one. She needs to be hungry in the morning (hunger been the best sauce and this also been the largest meal of the day for birds in the wild) and you need to mix the chopped veggies with cooked whole grains or she will take years to start eating them. At the beginning, you should make it a mix of 25% veggies (use regular chopped broccoli, sweet corn and organic peas and carrots -these are everybirdie's favorites) VERY finely chopped (the only one that needs to be chopped at this point is the broccoli and you can get it already done -label says Chopped Broccoli -not florets and not broccoli pieces) sold in bags in the freezer section of the supermarketand 75% grains (and use large grains like kamut, wheat, oat groats, hulled barley -check the closest Whole Foods for them- and don't cook them until they are soft, make them a hard al dente), then sprinkle a teeny tiny bit of seeds on it and mix them in so she has to move the grains and veggies out of the way to reach all of them - this will make her taste the flavoring (try putting chili powder in the mix one day and a tiny bit of honey or maple syrup -not pancake syrup which is made with high fructose sugar and nasty stuff like that, the real one, pure maple syrup- and a tiny sprinkle of Ceylon cinnamon -not the 'regular' one that doesn't say Ceylon in front) and, eventually try one or two of them by mistake and, once she does, she will realize she likes them and start eating them. Once she starts (you will see something that looks like empty skins which is the outer covering of the cooked grains), stop mixing seeds in it and continue checking everyday to see if she is eating any of the veggies and, when she has been doing it for a week in a row, up the ratio to 50/50. Then, very gradually and very slowly, start adding other veggies like chopped kale (it needs to be organic as it's on the 'dirtiest' list), sweet potatoes (no veggie is more nutritious!), butternut squash (Whole Foods sells it frozen already cut in small cubes), etc. But don't get impatient and give up saying to yourself "I tried and she doesn't like it" because parrots need to learn what to eat and this is only easy when they are babies, once they are adults and set in their ways, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to get them to eat a good diet -I find grays to be pickier than other species.
It the calcium is a human one, don't use it, get the avian calcium and follow the instructions for diluting it to the letter. Too much calcium and vit D3 is as dangerous as too little.
Here's what I did. I happened to be going to our local farm store to pick up our milk yesterday, so I checked out their grain section. I picked up a bag of long grain brown rice, a bag of exotic long grain mixed rice (brown black and red, their version of "exotic", I guess), and a bag of golden flax seed. Then I bought her kale greens, broccoli, carrots, apples, celery and cockatiel food. I compared the list of ingredients on the container of cockatiel food to the main ingredients Pajarita had given me for gloop and many of them are in there. I also picked up some calcium liquigels that I can mix in with her food to help supplement her diet. I'm pretty confident she's on a good path now, her appetite is definitely good and she's doing very well adjusting to her new sleep schedule. (So is the whole household....EVERYONE is sleeping better!! 
) Next is spending more time out of her cage, because I don't think they kept her out much at all. We like to have her out as much as possible. We'd like to have her more accustomed to being out and being comfortable with it and not biting.
Hubby and I decided we're going to check out our local caged bird club meeting tomorrow afternoon and see if it's something we'd like to join. There's lots of opportunities through them for adopting too, so we'd like to look into that. Where can I get avian calcium? Calciboost is listed on Amazon (the only place I've been able to find it) as a human calcium supplement.