Hello from Albuquerque

[bkeetie]

Thank you for this information. I fed Carla people-food because the avian vet I consulted when I got her told me that the best way to feed a parrot is to give it some of whatever I'm eating! He was a professor of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University, so I assumed he knew what he was talking about.

It is also interesting to me that the avian vet I consulted in Carla's case did not give me a definite diagnosis of fatty liver disease; she seemed to think it could be an infection,or cancer!

I am of course very grieved if the way I cared for Carla contributed to her death, but there seems to be a great deal of disagreement among people, including well-trained people, about how best to feed and care for parrots.

I will certainly moderate Bean's intake of protein and fat, for safety's sake.

[Wolf]

A large part of these discrepancies are due to the fact that until very recently there were no studies done concerning parrots in the field of nutrition and I am not sure that there are any going on even now. There are also no extended studies for a vet to become an avian vet.
On the same note there have been a lot of advances in parrot husbandry in the last 20 years or so but par for the course the findings are not normally released to the public and you have really got to search for answers to learn about them and this means more of a devotion to your birds welfare than most people possess. Even then I mostly find an individual study focused on this or that but no long term studies, also while there are studies about this or that when they discover that there is more involved in something than the very specific that they are looking for they just make it a notation instead of including it in the current study so although it may actually have more to do with their study than the proposed question it doesn't answer that specific question.

[bkeetie]

Thanks, Wolf. You make me feel somewhat better about having possibly fed Carla a harmful diet. I got her in 1989, but at that time I read books about parrot care, and I asked people allegedly in the know. I did what I was told was best.

I fed her mostly vegetables, fruits, and pasta/rice/bread. Fatty foods and protein foods were just something I gave her a taste of, when I was having some, because she begged for it. I have been treating Bean the same way. What I said in my earlier message probably sounded misleading. It's not like I feed the parrot meat, egg, and peanut butter every single day. I meant she gets a taste of meat, OR egg, OR peanut butter, or whatever, depending on what I'm eating that day.

Carla did prefer a seed-based parrot food. She refused to eat pellets. I gave her pellets a couple of times, and she picked up the pellets in her little foot and threw them on the floor! It was hysterically funny --- one of many fond memories I have of her personality.

I loved that bird dearly, and I do hope my actions were not the cause of her early death. She meant the world to me. I will try to do better with Bean.

[Wolf]

You would be surprised at how often a new bird owner receives poor information from breeders, vets and other people that should know better.

For parrots the sharing of food is a social and bonding activity and it is how their parents teach them how to eat as well as what to eat. So if you are enjoying what you eat, they see this and want you to share what you have with them. This can be used to your advantage when it comes to giving them a healthy diet as it is the best way to introduce them to a new food or to get them to try one that they may have already rejected. You just make sure that when you eat that you have a little bit that is good for them ready to give them.
This link viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12521 has a very good list beginning on the second page that has items that are both good for them as well as bad for them, it includes foods, woods, plants and household products. I hope you find it helpful.

[Lizz]

Yeh, why do they eat the meat. They sure can't take down a cow in the wild.

It is like the time I caught Myrtle on the kitchen sink with a chicken bone. She got to the plates before I could scrap them into the trash.

Yesterday she wanted a bite of my sandwitch. I thought she would bite the bread. Instead she grabbed a piece of pepperoni and flew away with it before I could grab it.

If a stranger had seen me chasing after a bird and yelling give me that pepperoni he would think I was loony tunes.

[Pajarita]

It wasn't your fault, my dear. Back then, we all fed them the wrong things. We just did not know any better. I gave Pretty Bird (my first rescue) fried chicken, hamburgers, French fries, etc. Her staple was a terrible seed mix full of sunflower seeds (which I free-fed!) and her 'treats' were pieces of commercial white flour bread and peanuts! Thankfully for her and all the other parrots that came after, on one of her check-ups, her uric acid levels came back super high and, when I started doing research about the condition (I am a bit of a know-it-all and have an insatiable curiosity about everything), I realized it was due to a diet too high in protein (uric acid is the 'left-over' after protein is metabolized) and this is what started my personal quest for a good parrot diet and all my years of research on their natural diets and how to 'convert' them to captivity diets.

And, yes, vets did recommend we fed them human food and we were all convinced that meat was good for them for the simple reason that breeders realized that, if they fed them animal protein, the hens did not become egg bound (we had no avian calcium supplements back then and understood very little about these things, it was more trial and error than anything else) so we figured feeding them meat was the answer. But we now know better and are realizing more and more (not only for animals but also for humans) that going back to what nature meant for each species to eat IS the right way to go. Mother Nature always knows best.

Do parrots like meat? Yes, they certainly do! It's not only high in protein, it's also high in fat and parrots are hard-wired to gorge on both. Now, you might ask, why would nature do this if it's not good for them? Because both fat and protein are needed for life and growth. Protein content in a body is only second to water. Protein is involved in ever single body function from cell integrity to hormones, to muscle growth, to digestive enzymes all the way to been the 'raw material' in skin, hair and nails. Without protein, you cannot sustain life (don't forget that the heart is a muscle!), growth or reproduction (that's why eggs are so high in protein). And although fat has been terribly maligned lately with all the diet fads, it's absolutely necessary for life, too. Fat is energy, it regulates body temperature, it forms the membrane of cells and it allows the body to absorb nutrients. Both are essential to life and neither is found in abundance in vegetarian sources so nature made it that, when a flock of parrots finds a tree loaded with high protein/fat nuts, they eat them and eat them and eat them until they finish them all. But flocks have many individuals, there aren't that many trees loaded with nuts and they take usually an entire year before they produce them again (and this time of the year always coincides with breeding season) - thus the predisposition of parrots to eat protein and fat until they can't eat another bite or the source is exhausted. Nature never considered that we would make pets out of them and free-feed them high protein/fat every day of their lives.

We all made mistakes with our birds, my dear. ALL OF US! Some of us did not make these mistakes because we were lazy or didn't care, we made them trying to do the right thing. And, as with everything else in life, the important thing is to learn from them and not make them again. That's all anybody can do.

[patti]

My lily screamed the same way when i first got her... every time i was out of her sight. even if i just ducked down behind a chair or a counter she would scream. i started answering it every single time with a soft "hello lily" and she started answering in chirps... but then in a few weeks it stopped entirely. guess it was just adjustment. my guess is that when you leave the room, the bird needs to know that you still exist. with a new bird, they probably arent so sure of this yet.

i started playing peek a boo with her so that she could understand that i was there even when she couldn't see me. that may have helped. i don't know what the mental capacity of parrots is but mine seems to have some concept of object permancnce but limited. lily is still working on it. she forgets about hidden peanuts unless she can see through the container, unless i give her the same container for about a week. but she seems to know i am still 'there' when i leave the room. i guess that would put her at the mental capacity of a toddler. they keep having to come back to you to make sure that you are always there.

[Lizz]

Thank you for telling me that Lily does it too. I thought Myrtle was autistic. She could be into something she should not and all I had to do was cover it. It was like it was never there.

[bkeetie]

Thanks to Pajarita and Patti. I still grieve for my Carla, and if I contributed to her illness by feeding her the wrong foods, it makes me very sad. However, I appreciate Pajarita pointing out that I didn't know any better, and was following (what I thought was) expert advice.

I will feed Bean a better diet. So far, I am clueless about how to make her stop screeching, but she does seem to do it less as time goes on. Maybe she is growing up and adjusting. I am having some success with saying "Hello" to her from other rooms when she screams for me. Eventually, she stops screeching and says, "Hello" or "I love you." Then I re-appear and fuss over her.

[Lizz]

Any one who loves their pets regrets the things they did or didn't do that may have caused their death.
My sweet baby, Charlene chocked to death in my hand.
Twinkle stayed on the bottom of the cage one day. She was gone the next morning.
I found Lemone' when I came home on the bottom with his neck broken.
I thought Sweetie was trying to lay an egg. Why didn't I take time to comfort her.
What did I do that could have caused their deaths? I regret and morn their loss.