New to forums with New Juvenile Sun Conure

[cat1hi]

So I fell in love with my new baby Sun Conure, Tinkerbelle. We currently have a Dutch Cabuchen Pidgeon but recently lost out Cockatiel. I had been studying these conures and have been wanting one so now seemed the time.
Now I realize I have alot to learn and will need help, so here I am. My little guy steps up on our fingers for food, spends 1/3 of the day out interacting with us and I have started food management.
Tink has been home with us for 10 days from pet supermarket where they did a very good job stopping it from biting. I brought home its nasty junk food from the store so as not to traumatize my little one to much. One of the first things I want to do it transition the little guy to healthy pellets.
So yesterday we free fed him and this morning he weighs 99 grams. This seems like its average weight. Tink has not offered to eat anything but the colored sugary food from the store. Generally we feed Harrisons, this time I bought high potency. I contacted the store to get a hatch date but have not heard back yet. Tink appears to still have his juvenile coloring.
The question is how to get Tink off the junk food onto Harrisons, any suggestions for a newbie? Is it to soon? Is Tink to young to only give it only Harrisons and force conversion? Tink is not getting any seed at this time.
This is my first forum, so I will be learning about forums as well as juvenile Sun Conures. Thanks Cat1hi
I will try to embed a link to Tinks pic
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/5 ... directlink

[Navre]

Hello, and welcome. Beautiful bird there.

I'd try mixing the two, and slowly using a smaller % of the colored stuff. I'd try making some gloop or chop, too. See what healthy stuff he does like, and use it to lure him to the stuff he might not be willing to try on his own.

Why are you opting for the high potency Harrisons?

[Pajarita]

Welcome! Going by the picture, you have a baby in your hands (you mention juvenile but, if he was one, he would have gone through the juvenile molt and his wings plumage would be different) and, as such, you cannot do food management, my dear. Babies need to have abundant food they can eat (and that means soft food) accessible to them 24/7. They not only need the extra nutrition, just as any growing baby would, but they also need the emotional comfort of it, especially when they are moved to a new and strange environment with new people to handle them. You need to be extra careful with this because babies that are not weaned properly end up with eating disorders (there is a study on this). In the wild, even when the baby is already eating on its own, the parents still supplement their food intake by feeding it in its beak so, personally, if I were you, I would even handfeed him, at least, once a day. It will not only provide him with good nutrition, it will also comfort and reassure him during a difficult period for him as well as create a VERY strong bond with you.

I would also do more research on sun conures diet in the wild because, if you do, you will find that they don't eat such high protein as the one provided by the High Potency. This is another point that you have to be careful about because high protein intake is the number one cause for liver malfunction and failure in pet parrots. And, to put the icing on the cake, high protein will make him hormonal and aggressive (and this translates into screams and bites -two not so attractive traits of theirs). I have a female sun conure and a male jenday (very similar species) right now and have had two male sunnies in the past and have found that keeping their sexual hormone production right and feeding them a fresh food diet works wonders for their health and disposition. The female I have right now has, most likely, very serious medical issues so I won't use her diet as an example but both the male Jenday and the previous sunnies got gloop and raw produce (one fruit, one veggie and one leafy green) for breakfast and all day picking and a measured portion of a good quality seed/nut mix for dinner and they were WONDERFUL birds with none of the common sun conure 'issues' (no screams, no aggression, affectionate, beautiful plumage, etc.) even though all three had been given up because of them.