does your bird graze or gorge?

[CSLFiero]

Loxley is so "not for want", he only eats his favorite bits of food and then grazes the rest of the day on what's left.

I think he's holding out for treats!

[Pajarita]

LOL - that's the way they all are and that's why protein food (pellets, seeds, nuts) should never be free-fed or given in the morning.

[GreenWing]

What do you feed Loxley? ('Love that name, BTW ^^) I think it's a question of the seed mix/pellet mix in Loxley's food. Example: Are there sunflowers in Loxley's mix?

As for my Grey, Chance gorges, lol. Well, she mostly gorges in the morning when I return her food dish as I take it away at night. She gets a morning mix of fresh food with "some" seeds/dried veggies and a few Harrison's pellets as a mix. I haven't noticed her picking favorites out of the mix, as far as I have noticed she eats pretty much all of what's offered and the rest ends up on the bottom of the cage, lol. Dinner is fresh food, usually of vitamin A content. She doesn't gorge her dinner as much... she usually waits to see me eat and then eats with me.

[CSLFiero]

Good girl chance! Does she have a noticeably stuffed crop after eating?

A typical meal for loxley is 30% filler (lintels, veggie mix, oatmeal once in a while) 30% pellets, 30% fruit, and 10% nuts. His bowl is empty by bedtime, but in the morning after greedily munching his half of a walnut and 8 pomegranate arils he'd have me believe that there isn't anything left to eat. But there is only so long he can't heft himself around before he's desperate and ready to eat healthy food.

[GreenWing]

Lol, I'm not sure about her crop after she eats. She's a good eater. What's funny is that she specifically asks for "chicken" and "applesauce"... which obviously her previous owners fed her. Before I took her home, she was examined by the avian vet and the only issue mentioned is that she was lacking in vitamin A. I take care of that by making sure she gets vitamin A foods.

Anyway, I think the graze vs. gorge thing is a matter of what you're most comfortable with regarding your bird. I don't practice hardcore food maintenance myself... I am somewhere in the middle. I take Chance's food dish away at night, but I leave SOME food in her dish before her dinner. She usually doesn't eat before her dinner, though. If she does, it's around dinnertime anyway so I feed her then.

I've met parrot owners who advocate food maintenance and I've met experienced parrot owners who swear by free-feeding. I don't think there's a linear, one-way of doing things. Do what works best for you and your bird.

[Pajarita]

It also depends on the species. The larger parrots, which are usually canope feeders, have two meals a day, the morning one which is usually the heaviest, and dinner, so one could say they 'gorge' but, in reality, they do graze a bit during the day, too. Then you have the smaller ones which are all partial ground foragers (budgies, tiels, plets, lovies, linnies, etc) and those tend to eat more in the morning and in the evening but they pick all day long.

I like to feed the healthiest food (cooked cereal grains, veggies, fruits, leafy greens) in the morning and leave it there all day long to ensure they consume more of it than the 'other' food -this 'other' food is not 'bad' but it's iffy food because it's the high protein and one needs to be extra careful about how much they eat of it while they can eat as much as they want of the healthy food without any negative consequences (fatty liver disease, obesity, high cholesterol, high uric acid, etc) down the road.

[Graeme]

Bailey is a little picky, he will pick through the bowl and throw out what he doesn't want. He is fed morning and evening.

Morning is a mix of pellets, seeds and nuts and the evening meal is fruits and of course treats through out the day.