by Pajarita » Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:03 am
Welcome to the forum, Dad! At 8 weeks of age, you have to continue handfeeding so, although your idea of getting them used to eating a large variety of produce while still very young is great, you need to wait until you start the weaning -which cannot be done at 8 weeks of age because they are too young regardless of what the breeder might have told you (breeders are not pet owners, their goal is not to feed right but to feed for breeding and moving 'merchandise', a completely different thing). What you need to do is to dilute the formula with baby food and rethink the diet you will offer them as juveniles/adults because seeds and pellets are not good for caiques. Caiques require lower protein and higher moisture than other species and free-feeding protein food is real bad for them (it's actually bad for all species of parrots -parrots are NOT natural seed eaters, they evolved to eat fresh, wet, raw plant material). I have a black cap caique that was free-fed protein food for 10 years and he now has chronic liver malfunction -took me years of a good diet and liver cleansers and tonics to stop his soft molt and even now he still molts around his face all year round. So, when you prepare the formula, add pureed fruit or veggies from baby jars (but nothing with spinach and very little kale) - not too much at first because, as I said, at 8 weeks of age, they are still very young babies (in the wild, they wouldn't have even left the nest yet) but, as they get a little older, you can start adding more (caiques require larger portions of fruit than other species). And, please, make sure you know how to handfeed, that you are able to do it four times a day, and that you have all the implements (including a food thermometer because maintaining the right temperature from beginning to end is VERY important) and that you always allow the crop to empty completely once a day.
Also, don't give up on your macaws and grays! You can them to eat greens, it's a matter of giving to them the right green and at the right time. For one thing, they all love raw broccoli (make sure is fresh by 'pushing' your finger tip into the 'top', the florets should be tight and hard -old broccoli is softer and the florets start to open up) so that's no issue, the difficulty is with leafy greens but that's because most people give them the 'soft' leafy part instead of giving them what they really like which is the crunchy stalks. Try the very heart of the romaine or the larger stalks of the outer/big leaves, red/green/rainbow Swiss chard (my birds adore the red one!), bok choy, celery and Brussels sprouts. And always follow the right feeding protocol: take out any protein food at night when the parrot is asleep and, at dawn, give them raw produce until the sun is streaming into the room when they can get the 'staple' (I feed gloop). After that, it's just a matter of patience. All my birds came from somebody else and they all eat a good diet now. I recently switched a 24 + years YDH amazon and a blue crown conure that had been free-fed protein food and a little bit of fruit (birds that are free-fed protein food never ever really eat a good diet) and, even though these birds had never eaten a single leafy green, they are eating them now (and it's only been a couple of months, too) so it's perfectly doable if you feed the right food at the right time.
