Baby green cheek

[Pajarita]

Nothing to be thankful for, my dear - this is why I come here: to help them and the people who are responsible for them. Most people like birds but I love them. It's not only that I derive huge pleasure from admiring their beauty, enjoying the songs of the songbirds and observing their behaviors, I also happen to think they are the most underappreciated and understudied class of all the animals. Birds are just plain awesome, if you ask me. And, unfortunately, they are also the pets that get the worst kind of life with us - so I try to make their life a little bit better.

[isa]

im taking sprite to the vet tomorrow at 3 because I feel like sprite was trying more to eat and has still been losing weight. hopefully there is nothing wrong with sprite however I want to be sure so fingers crossed!

[Pajarita]

Good! One should never ignore red flags - if they mean nothing, it's great - but, if they do, it's always better to catch early whatever is causing them to pop up.

[isa]

as an update sprite is doing great! eating completely on its own. I would call it a success but sprite weaned onto pellets and now barely eats the fresh stuff. I have got to start making the lentils and quinoa again. the most annoying thing is sprite wont even eat apples or fruit when it used to love them. sprite flies really well now

[Pajarita]

Lentil/quinoa has too much protein for GCCs. You need a low protein grain base for them. The reason why your bird is not eating raw produce has to be that you are free-feeding the protein food - which is a no-no for all parrots but most especially for the little ones that eat mostly fruit and greens. I know people would say: "Well, how could you possibly know this for a fact? Maybe it's some other reason..." but, in my personal experience, it is ALWAYS the only reason. Large African parrots that have been eating the wrong diet for years are a bit more difficult to train to eat a good diet and an be very stubborn about it but South American parrots are super easy and, when we talk about a baby, there is only one reason and one reason alone: free-feeding the protein food and not timing the servings correctly. You need to offer high protein food for dinner, take whatever is left over after the bird falls asleep and, in the morning, at the break of dawn, give them the raw produce, wait half an hour to 45 minutes (and eat some of it yourself in front of the bird) and then serve the low protein, grain-based food with veggies mixed in.

Be careful because GCCs are mainly fruit eaters and their livers and kidneys cannot stand a steady diet of a super dry, high protein food...