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Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

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Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby vchip1970 » Tue Oct 18, 2016 2:23 pm

Oscar 2.jpg
Just chillin
Hello I'm new to the forum,
I'm a proud owner of a 9 month old male Eclectus, named Oscar. I adopted him as soon as he was weened. The breeder clipped his wings early which I am a little upset about. I still let him fly to his evening cage. He loves it. He likes to play and understands when he's a little rough. I feed him a chop of my own creation, (well researched with plenty of veggies, whole gains, nuts and a touch of herb salad. Fruits I will add fresh) I will feed him healthy seed breads (toast) with coconut oil as a snack. I also Cook him fresh meals with eggs and brown rice, whole grains and beans. I make him home made sweet potato chips (he loves those) and I feed him Bountiful Harvest for parrots.
His name is Oscar because when I first got him he was quite grouchy. So he became Oscar the Grouch! Now he is no way near the boy he was. He is so cool now and Loves to hang out.
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Oscar 1.jpg
Is that food?
vchip1970
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 5
Location: Orlando
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Male Eclectus
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Re: Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby Pajarita » Wed Oct 19, 2016 12:10 pm

Hi, Oscar and attendant! He is a beauty! But, my dear, please don't take this the wrong way because I am not criticizing as I can tell that you put A LOT of thought and effort into his diet and triple kudos to yo for that! But you might want to do more research on it because it seems to me that you are feeding too many protein foods (whole grains, seeds, nuts, beans, eggs!! which are a complete no-no for all parrots but they are even worse for ekkies) and super high saturated fat (coconut oil!!!!! ay, ay, ay) - plus, Bountiful Harvest has soy, dry corn, vit A instead of betacarotene, non-organic fruits that NEED to be organic, etc. (not very good...) - the moisture level at 19% is not as bad as other pellets but still too dry for an ekkie and the protein level is also not as bad as it's a minimum of 14 while most other pellets are Min 17 but, it's a minimum value and not an actual one (this is one of the reason why I don't like pellets - you don't really know what level of protein you are feeding!).

Also, are you taking into consideration their possible intolerance to salicylates?
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
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Re: Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby Luckyandjenn » Wed Oct 19, 2016 12:35 pm

Welcome hes cute sounds like your off to a good start and some great advice on foods i cant wait to hear more about oscar
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Re: Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby vchip1970 » Wed Oct 19, 2016 4:18 pm

Pajarita, (I didn't take any of it the wrong way)
I was going to send you a private message for advice but this is a forum... LOL
I thought I was doing pretty good with his diet. I thought Coconut oil has a lot Beta Carotene in it. Then that will get converted into Vitamin A. And What I have read, Monounsaturated fat is the good fat. I only feed him the coconut oil on whole grain bread, Maybe twice a week, he loves it. I did wonder if I might be feeding him too much nuts, just from what I see in the Bountiful harvest blend, seems to be an over abundance of nuts. The chop I made him is about 60-70 percent veggies... And the rest is more of the dryer ingredient like organic oats, a touch crushed organic chia seeds and quinoa, just because it keeps better and soaks up the moisture when it comes out of the freezer. I then take this and mix it up with fresh ingredients like peas, broccolini, pom seeds, fresh fruit and partially cooked carrots or sweet potatoes. I also sprinkle the food with some crush eggs shells and herb salad from twin beaks aviary and some almond slivers. I do also give him a quinoa, brown rice and lentil mixture with all that (too much?). He also gets Totally Organics TOP Pellets for all size Parrots occasionally (barely touches this, I keep this in his evening cage to give him something to munch on when he wakes up), Is that no good? I also give him higgins worldly cuisine for a hot meal in the evening with more chop of course. After that he wants to go to his evening cage to sleep around 8ish every night. Was there anything I am doing right for him that you can tell? His diet is mostly veggies and fruit at least in my mind it is? Plus most of everything I feed him ends up on the floor of his cages or his play stands, So it all sounds like a lot but in the end I throw a lot away. I'll hang a half an artichoke in his cage or wrap treats in brown paper and hang that to a sea grass mat and let him go to town on those at times, Fun for all. But, I welcome any suggestions you can give (someone with knowledge is good to have on my side). When you talk moisture content and stuff that is blowing way over my head because I never took that into consideration or even thought I had too.

Just to reiterate, His day goes like this:
Morning: The chop, extra veggie and fruit mix with The brown rice mixture (talked about above)
Afternoon: Bountiful harvest (recommend for Eckkies, ...So they say)
Evening: Hotmeal with some chop
(snacks in between listed above) Not listing the tops pellets because he eats so little of that in a week.

There is a lot to take in here but If I get good advice I will use it.
vchip1970
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Gender: This parrot forum member is male
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Location: Orlando
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Male Eclectus
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Re: Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby ParrotsForLife » Wed Oct 19, 2016 5:00 pm

Dont Eclectus Parrots have a special diet?
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Tiko, African grey, Oscar, BFA
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Re: Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby vchip1970 » Wed Oct 19, 2016 5:33 pm

Yes they do need a special diet that consists of mostly veggies because of their digestive track. They can have other items also.. I forgot to mention that. Sprout seeds also.
vchip1970
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 5
Location: Orlando
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Male Eclectus
Flight: No

Re: Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby ParrotsForLife » Wed Oct 19, 2016 5:57 pm

vchip1970 wrote:Yes they do need a special diet that consists of mostly veggies because of their digestive track. They can have other items also.. I forgot to mention that. Sprout seeds also.

Also mostly fruit I read, I knew there was another species besides Lorikeets that need a special diet.
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ParrotsForLife
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Mango, Plum headed parakeet
Tiko, African grey, Oscar, BFA
Flight: Yes

Re: Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby Wolf » Thu Oct 20, 2016 6:05 am

Vchip1970, It sounds to me like overall you have done very well with your birds diet and I can see that you have done a lot of research in trying to get his diet to be as good as you can get it to be. I can see where you are a bit bothered by Pajaritas suggestions, but really it is more of her lack of tact in explaining the whys for what she had to say. I assure you that she really is on your birds side and only wants to help you to give him nothing but the best.

As my way of trying to explain what I mean by this Let's take a minute to look at the moisture level of his food. Not realizing that parrots need a high moisture diet is not your fault as I discovered while researching the diets of my own parrots. There was little or no mention of the effects of the lack of moisture in their diet and it appeared that all of the sources that I had run across expected that our birds would increase their water intake to counter the effects of the low moisture foods in their diet. The thing that is not explained in regards to this is that parrots drink very little water during the day and what they do drink is mostly first thing in the mornings and then again in the late afternoon or evening when they normally eat before going to roost. So even though they will increase their intake of water it is always after the fact so that if they did not drink enough for that meal their bodies pull the moisture needed to digest that meal from the surrounding tissues and it is not until their next mealtime that they will drink more water. This means that there is a period of mild dehydration that occurs between these times when the bird normally drinks. It was not until I was reading up on this in an avian medical text that I discovered anything about this and even then it seemed to me to be downplayed more than it should have been although it did mention that many of the parrots that were seen at the avian vets suffered most of the time from a mild but chronic tissue dehydration. Sometimes the information that we need is not discussed or found in the usual places that we look for this information and it is not until either someone else who has found out about it lets us know about it or we eventually stumble across it ourselves that we learn anything about it.

Here is another one that is not normally found where it should be... Rice, Many of us feed some rice to our birds, it is a grain and should be good for them, right? Well did you know that most of the rice that we eat and share with our birds, such as white or brown rices are very high in arsenic? I only learned of this this past year and because of it have remove rice from all of my birds diet. Very often, although we can't duplicate our birds natural diet, we must still research what their natural diet is and use that as a guide for what type of foods to give to them.

As I stated earlier what Pajarita was trying to share with you was not a matter of trying to tell you what you were doing wrong, it was offered to help you improve on all of the great research that you had already done. She tend to be less tactful than some people are accustomed to, but her intent is not to discourage or to blame you, it is intended to help you with some of the information that could otherwise take you a long time to find on your own.

I hope that this will help to clear the air so that a better understanding can happen.
Wolf
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Re: Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby vchip1970 » Thu Oct 20, 2016 11:17 am

Thanks Wolf!
It's good to know about a higher moisture content. I do notice how little he drinks... He'll drink in the morning doing his bath, very rarely do I see him climb down to his bowl to drink. What I need to do is follow the pyramid a little more...http://eclectusparrots.net/foodpyramid.html
I would reference this website to see what fruits and veggies he can eat that are not harmful because sometime you come across a fruit or a veggie you've never seen or payed attention to and think.. "Can my bird eat this?" LOL. This site is why I sprout, I can see he can have a lot more than what I feed him. And certainly I can feed him less of the proteins and nuts. His chop is made up of a lot of the second tier in this pyramid.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
vchip1970
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 5
Location: Orlando
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Male Eclectus
Flight: No

Re: Hello From Oscar and his personal attendant.

Postby Pajarita » Thu Oct 20, 2016 12:56 pm

No, of course that I did not mean to imply that you were doing anything wrong... I could tell from the very beginning that you had done a lot of research and worked very hard putting his diet together. I also think that one of the hardest things about keeping parrots is to feed them right! I've been doing research since 1994 and I am still constantly learning about it... The thing is that most of the information we get is vague and scant to say the least! You can go to ornithological places and read about a parrot's natural diet but all they give you is a list that reads something like: fruits, buds, flowers, nuts, seeds, etc - they never tell you how much of each of these things they eat or what, exactly, they mean when they say seeds or nuts of even fruits! Because, even though fruits are all fruits, there are all different kinds of fruits, aren't they? And there are seeds which are low in protein and seed which are high (like quinoa, for example). And who would think of checking the moisture content of any of these items? We might think of checking the protein and fat content but the moisture?!

People think that feeding dry food is OK because the parrot will increase the water intake but they don't take into consideration that parrots are prey animals which are meant by nature to derive almost ALL their hydration needs from their diet and which are programmed (again, by nature) to drink very little and only at twilight (this is survival mechanism as predators vision is impaired at these times so they are the safest times to go to ground and drink). To make things worse, some people feed dehydrated produce and use bottles for their parrots water - a system that delivers a drop at a time and a very dangerous thing to do to a bird because:
a) it's VERY hard for anybody to determine from a simple physical examination if a bird is dehydrated (you can't use the methods we have with mammals, you can't check their gums or inside their beak because they don't have any saliva; you can't pull their skin away from their flesh to check the resiliency/bounce, etc)
b) as birds are wired to drink only a certain number of 'gulps', if they only have access to a drop at a time, they would never be able to hydrate themselves properly
c) the 'wetness' of poop is one of the first symptoms we have but parrots that are chronically mildly dehydrated will not show, say, polyuria even when they are suffering from it because the body will gladly absorb any extra liquid to balance itself out when dehydrated.

Now, this is what we do know. We know that parrots derive almost all of their hydrating needs from their food and we know that they eat plant material - different kinds like fruits (85 to 95% water), leaves, buds, flowers (80 to 85% water), seeds, grains and nuts BUT, and here is another kicker, these are green seeds, grains and nuts! They are taken from the plant so they have higher moisture than the ones we get in the stores which have been dried to extend shelf life.

So, as you can see, proper moisture content becomes something that we need to take into consideration... And this is not only because one should always strive to emulate their natural diet but also because we have learned from our experience with other animals that, when you dramatically reduce the amount of moisture in an animal's diet, eventually, you will end up with an animal that develops kidney issues. Cats are a great example. We thought that kibble was just fine for them but we now know that it's not, that if you feed kibble all the time, you will end up with a cat with kidney problems - why? Because, although cats have been domesticated for thousands of years, they descend from a desert animal which derived almost all his hydration needs from its diet (obligate carnivore - with meat having a water content of an average of 75%). See what I mean?

Now, as to protein. Not all protein is created equal. Animal protein has more amino acids than any vegetal source of it - it also has much more fat and the bad one, too! Parrots are, with a very few exceptions, herbivores so they don't have the enzymes to actually digest animal protein correctly. Then you have the bad cholesterol that you find in animal protein... Parrots in the wild do not consume anything with bad cholesterol so nature did not give them a digestive mechanism to clean it out of their system. People talk about them eating insects and they are right that they do eat some but insect flesh has virtually no fat and no bad cholesterol. Ergo, when you feed a parrot, say, chicken or eggs, you are feeding too much protein, too much fat and, unfortunately, bad cholesterol of which a huge percentage will remain inside the bird's body. I've had birds with high cholesterol that ended up dying from it and we have a member, Navre, who adopted Tanya, an Hispaniolan amazon, with high cholesterol - and despite his excellent care of her and hugely expensive medical treatment ended up dying from it.

I know of the eclectus pyramid... but, taking into consideration that the breeder who first put it together (Laurella Desborough but she no longer breeds them, I think) was never able to keep her birds from dying young, I would not swear by it.

Your diet is very comprehensive and varied, and that is real good! :thumbsup: But I would eliminate the eggs, the coconut oil (it's red palm oil that has the betacarotene but I don't use it, either - coconut oil is not even a real oil, it's a fat -anything that is not liquid at room temperature is a fat- and it's a whooping 91% saturated fat!!) and the sprouts. Sprouts are great in terms of general nutrition but they are also high in protein so they should only be fed during breeding season and not all year round. You could feed them as long as you don't feed any other source of protein that same day... and you can apply the same principle to all the other protein sources - with this I mean that everything that you feed with the exception of what I listed above is good food but, if you feed whole grains, nuts, seeds, sprouts, beans, etc all in the same day, you will end up with too much protein for an ekkie because all birds are programmed to crave protein and gorge on it when they find it. I would feed just produce with very little cooked whole grains for all day picking and give him higher protein for dinner (maybe a gloop with cooked whole grains, some sprouts and one single nut or two). I would also do a 'breeding' season diet and a 'resting' season diet because ekkies are very prone to getting overly hormonal in captivity (the rich food and their naturally long breeding season) so I would be very careful about that.

Oh, I almost forgot. About Wolf's rice comment - yes, US rices all have too much arsenic, even the organically grown ones, because it's in the soil. I only use Lundberg's red and/or black rice -they are organic, both are whole grains, both are much more nutritious than brown or white rice and they are the lowest in arsenic you can find. The other alternative is brown basmati rice grown either in India or in Thailand.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
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