Underweight, picky Parakeet

[MoustacheP]

Hi!

So I have a male mustache parakeet that I adopted a little while ago from a local rescue. He is in great health by all accounts, and shows no sign of being ill, but when I recently took him to a bird shop to get a wing clipping, the person doing it commented that he was large for a mustache, but skinny.

We also have a female, and compared to her his breastbone is much more defined. I can't tell if it's just the way he's built (tall and lanky, I guess?), or if he's underweight.

They always have fresh sprouted seed and pellet mixtures, but getting him to eat anything in the way of fresh veggies is a PAIN. I guess his original owners never fed them anything but seeds, so they're pretty addicted.

So my questions are: how can you tell if your bird is underweight, and if they are, what's a good way to plump them up if they're super picky eaters? (I don't just wanna carb load him - I want him to be healthy, not fat).

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

xxKate

[Wolf]

This parrot should have an average weight of close to 5 and a half ounces or about 156 grams. Please remember that this is an average weight and that yours may need to be a little heavier or lighter. While you should be able to feel the keel bone it should not be prominent as this may indicate that the bird is underweight and may also indicate that the muscles needed for flight are atrophied. I would guess that in this parrot it is a combination of both of these conditions.
You say that by all accounts he is healthy, but if I may ask, by what accounts, an avian vet perhaps?
You said that he has sprouted seeds and pellets all of the time and does not eat any fresh vegetables. This is not a good diet for any parrot, as they really need to eat fresh vegetables, leafy greens and whole grains. I do not envy you the process of switching them over to a good healthy diet. While some may be fairly easy to switch from a seed or pellet only diet, such as my Amazon was, others are very difficult and require a long time and a lot of patience and persistence, such as my African Grey.
I feed all of my parrots a cooked mixture of whole grains, mixed vegetables and cooked white beans and lentils, which we call gloop. I feed this mix for breakfast along with a fresh vegetable, a fruit and a leafy green and I give them enough to last all day until dinnertime. I then feed them a seed mix for dinner and remove that when they go to sleep at night. There are several posts concerning gloop in the Health, Nutrition and Diet section of these forums just enter gloop into the search box and hit enter and you will get all of the information on this food and several variations of it as well as how to effectively switch them over to it.
I know that it is too late right now, but please reconsider clipping your birds wings as it is not good for them mentally, physically or emotionally not to mention that it deprives them of their only means of escaping from dangerous situations, which are exceedingly abundant for a bird living in a human environment.

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum, Kate!

Wolf is right about clipped birds and their lack of muscle mass and tone, especially noticeable in the chest (the same muscles that move the wings up and down, go down their chest all the way to the abdomen and hens use these same muscles to lay their eggs) but it worries me that a clipped bird should 'feel' underweight because a bird with no exercise (nature made it so the only exercise a bird has is flight, they is no other that has any kind of effect on their muscles -not even flapping furiously while climbing up a hill) and a diet so rich in protein as yours is getting should be over and not underweight (think of a person in a wheelchair). Does he eat well? Is he producing enough poop? Is his poop normal in color and consistency xx? Did he have a bile acids test done when vetted at the rescue? (they should have given you copies of whatever test results they got from their vet).

As to his diet... well, it's actually pretty bad, you know? I don't mean to make you feel bad, I know that you want to do your best by them but although sprouts are excellent nutrition, they are also quite high in protein so, in reality, you are feeding high protein all the time -and that's not good, it destroys their kidneys and livers in the long run. Now, moustaches are psittaculas and ALL psittaculas are GREAT eaters so it's just a matter of putting the time, money and effort into it. All birds transition to better diets... it could take weeks or it could take years but they all do at the end. It's a matter of persistence, experimenting and timing.

Personally, I swear by gloop. I came up with it 20 years ago when my first rescue was diagnosed with high uric acid from her bad diet (which she had always had and I continued!) and, although I've continued doing research on it (lots of new pellets and other types of food have appeared since), I still think it's the best option for them. And the other good thing about it is that all birds love it (even birds that are not parrots!) and, because you can manipulate the ingredients, the transition is easy.