by Pajarita » Thu Aug 02, 2018 9:12 am
OK. his age. Yes, birds of a certain age [and not necessarily very old, either!] that have been fed wrong, do end up with liver, kidney and heart problems [especially zons that require a very low protein diet with lots of produce -pellets being a no-no for them because of the high protein content of ALL of them!] but which value was off and what was the actual level? I would like to know, if you can get the info, because I have old zons myself and have been able to get them to normal blood values -even the ones with severe liver damage- so I might be able to help with this.
As to his growling, yes, it's that he feels threatened. It's up to you but I never allow people to get too close to my birds -whether they are flying around or in their cages. Parrots are not 'explorers' by nature. They don't like change, they don't like strangers, they don't like noises they cannot recognize and, most especially, they do NOT like being stared at! So I always tell the people who come over to look at them from a bit of a distance, not to try to interact with them and never to stare at them [I tell them to look at them out of the corner of their eye and to turn their face a bit sideways so the birds don't feel threatened]. Is it possible that your adult company usually went straight to his cage and stood there, a mere foot or two away, staring at him? Because that would really make the poor bird nervous [afraid?] - and, if this happened often enough, he would expect it and make him react even when it doesn't. There was a study done recently that said that anticipating stress is as harmful as going through it even when the stressor doesn't really materialize so, if he was made to feel that adult company is threatening, he will react to it even when they no longer do anything.