Food for Pod

[DanaandPod]

lol, Pod, my Jardine's parrot. Okay, I am a stubborn person always at first...but now I am starting to think that I will do away with how i am feeding my bird. I would like to encorporate more natural stuff to his diet... But, first...heres what he eats and will eat based on dozens of tries....

unsalted unshelled peanuts, almonds in the shell, sunflower seeds. Sunflower are his favorite and he does his tricks for them alone....

fruit flavor zupreem (his foraging toy favorite) Dr. D's pellets his staple pellet.

Peas, beans, apple, banana, a tad of carrot, and wild rice/brown, quinoa, oh and mangos...

What are all of your suggestions and how much. Most especially, what can i do in replace of him doing tricks for sunflower seeds?


thanks

[Wolf]

With the list of vegetables that you gave you have a good start on a form of Pajarita's gloop, Which is white beans(cooked), Whole grains (cooked) and vegetables.
I would stay with the sunflower seeds for training as you are giving a very limited amount of them and if they are not part of the rest of his diet there is not much chance that he is getting too many of them.
Pajarita is the best hereon diet, so I leave the rest of this for her.

[Pajarita]

OK, first of all, "dozens of tries" means nothing to a parrot. It has taken me up to 5 whole years (and that means hundreds of tries) to get a bird to eat a good diet (granted that this particular bird was a CAG that had been badly abused and had come to me semi-catatonic).

I will tell you what my Jardine eats (which is the same as all the other parrots, from the budgies to the cockatoos). She gets gloop, one fruit, one veggie and one leafy green for breakfast and about two heaping tablespoons of a seed mix which has very little sunflower seeds (I mix a cockatiel mix with some striped sunflowers with a small psittacine safflower-based one) for dinner. My gloop is all cooked and has whole grains (oats, kamut, wheat, hulled barley, black japonica/red Himalayan rice -the order is descending in terms of quantities) with pulses (black lentils and small white beans) with a sprinkle of flax seed (as well as chia and sesame seed during breeding and molting seasons). This mixture constitutes 50% of the final product and the other half are cooked vegetables: broccoli, corn, peas and carrots, white hominy, butternut cubes, sweet potato, chopped green beans, blue kale, artichoke hearts (the last ingredient varies from batch to batch but I've been using artichoke hearts the most lately with Brussels sprouts, second). The fruits could be apple, orange, banana, pear, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, cherries, mango, red papaya, grapes, kiwi, figs, pomegranate, etc. The veggies: cherry, grape or 'regular' tomato, yellow or green zucchini, red/orange/yellow/green pepper, jalapeno/habanero/Italian pepper, celery, cucumber, all kinds of pumpkins or squashes (cooked), fennel root, potatoes (cooked), corn on the cob, yucca, white sweet potato (the Spanish kind that is not as sweet), carrots, green and wax beans, sugar snaps, snow peas, beets, cauliflower (cooked), etc. The 'greens': romaine/red leaf/green leaf/boston/butter lettuce, regular/red/dinosaur kale, chicory, escarole, red/green/savoy/nappa cabbage, broccoli, broccoli-rabe, bok choy, green/rainbow/red Swiss Chard, dandelion greens, endives (not often as they are too expensive to buy for all my birds), etc. I never feed them spinach or collard/mustard/turnip greens.

BabyBoyd (her way of saying the name she was given: Baby Bird ) came to me 7 years ago eating seeds and apples (she still calls any type of fruit 'apple' and asks for them "Youwannapple?") and although she is not big on leafy greens, she does like her raw broccoli and Red Swiss chard (the red stalks are particularly sweet and juicy and all my birds love them but they can't get them more than once a week because they are high in oxalates) and loves her gloop and fruits. Today they had a spicy gloop (I alternate one day spicy and one day sweet), red globe grapes, fennel root and romaine lettuce (she went first for a couple of bites of gloop but then switched to the grapes which she loves but she will go back to the gloop to fill up). As you can see, she is a very good eater.

[DanaandPod]

Okay very informative. thank you. What about the amounts? And, is quinoa ok?
I started to split each sunflower seed into thirds now. Before I cut them in half. therefor, he will get even less as a treat after tricks. He seemed to not mind at all. So, he is basically getting maybe a couple or less teaspoons daily of sunflower seeds. Bad or okay?

[Wolf]

Quinoa is good but you are giving too many sunflower seeds. My Grey only gets about four sunflower seeds in a days time. I am sure that more would not hurt her but she get enough protein as it is.

[Pajarita]

Wolf is right, that's way too many sunflowers. And, yes, quinoa is good but he should eat a large variety of grains, not just one. As to portions, I kind of free-feed gloop because I put out more than they eat and just get rid of the leftover in the evening when they get their dinner (which is measured so they fill their crop and have a tiny bit leftover (but it's a good mix with different kinds of seeds and not just one kind), just in case (birds don't eat the same amounts all year round, they bulk up for the breeding season and then again during molt so their weights are not always the same -that's the way nature made them.

[DanaandPod]

Oh boy! Okay...wow... Well, I will make sure he only gets total of four sun flower seeds daily? I have no idea what I am going to use as a treat for his tricks tho...
I am happy to say that he ate a mash of yellow squash, green beans, wild rice and quinoa today...seemed to like it all. He prefers anything if it is cooked. I also had a bowl of it myself...lol all this talk makes me want to go vegan again.

[DanaandPod]

How many almonds in the shell and unshelled unsalted peanuts would you allow a Jardine's per day? I usually hide a few almonds for his foraging. And, I give him a couple peanuts when i put him back into his cage and I leave.

[Wolf]

Maybe you could trade of some of the treat during your training sessions for head scratches and praise. Or try to get 2 or 3 tricks before giving a treat.
Kiki, my Senegal can be motivated to try different things with treats and/ or head scratches and praise. Kookooloo, my Grey is a much tougher nut to crack as she will accept a treat for free but not for trying to do tricks, for her the only thing that I have that she will accept for trying a trick is head scratches and praise. No other reward seems to be worth the effort to her.
I offer all of my birds except for Skeeter, my parrotlet one almond or peanut per day usually with their dinner. Skeeter gets a sunflower seed.
I am concerned mostly about the amount of protein in their diet and just made a new batch of gloop that has only about 20 to 25 % beans in it as beans are a source of protein and just ordered and receive TOPS all in one seed mix for all of my birds and a vitamin/ mineral supplement as the last seed mixes still had a lot of wheat and soy products in them. The wheat didn't bother me as much as the soy products which is why I orders this mix, to get away from the soy. and just started using a full spectrum light for them.

[DanaandPod]

Thank you. I don't think he will go for scratches as a treat because I have all this time given them free and much of it. Oh holy wow...Pod has been getting way more of everything beyond what he should. Well, at least this lessens the fee for nuts and seeds in the future! I am thinking that what i will do is give food as a treat...like maybe something I don't give at meals. Or a particular fruit. Or just plain make him work for his whole breakfast. Also, like you said...more tricks for a treat. Just now, he put all the dice in the cup for one treat...when in the past he got a treat for each dice. maybe when I get some barley...he will do tricks for that...