Sleepy Sennie- extremely worried

[LightFlashA]

Hello everyone, I apologize in advance for a long post. I have a 2 year old female Senegal named Yui, and she has been very sleepy lately. She gets plenty of sleep, but during the day if she is not occupied with anything she will just sleep. Now there have been several things going on with her, but I want to start with asking about her schedule and diet.

Normally, and since I have had her (I got her when she was about 3 months old) I have woken her up at 12 o'clock noon and bed time is 12 o'clock midnight. Sometimes, if I have to go to work for a while at 10 or so, I will have to wake her up early so that she is not asleep all day while I'm gone. I am wondering if maybe I am keeping her natural biology clock off balance and that's why she's so sleepy/bored/lethargic? Should I allow her to wake up when the sun comes up and go to sleep when the sun goes down? Also, when I have to put her in the cage to leave the house, I have reason to believe that when I leave all she does is sleep, because when I come back she is asleep and I wake her up. Sometimes she is awake, and sometimes I notice that she chewed on her dried corn while I was gone. If I fall asleep in my room for a nap, she will fall asleep as well, as well as my little budgie will sleep too (my budgie has none of the problems my Senegal has).

Her diet for most of her life has been Caitec Oven fresh bites for medium parrots, with some dried veggies, fruits, or nuts occasionally. Since about two months ago, I started adding a vegetable chop with the pellets in her food bowl. The chop consists of spinach, kale, black beans, red kidney beans, whole wheat pasta, quinoa, red peppers, green peppers, green beans, and hard baby carrots. I let it thaw in the morning and by 12 noon it is ready for her, and I freeze it in ziploc bags. She gets a big spoonful of chop once a day and 6 pellets in the morning and 6 on the evening. I was hoping the chop would help her lethargy, but it hasn't seemed to make a noticeable difference. She has a fine appetite, sometimes rarely she won't eat all her pellets or veggies, but not very often.

I am also wondering if she is sleepy due to a lack of sunlight. I do have a very large sunny window in my room, but I know that taking birds outside on a harness is the best way for them to get sunlight. I am still working on conditioning her to her harness, it has taken a very long time and she still will not put it on. Perhaps I should get a UV lamp?

One last thing before I go into her medical issues-- I would like to believe that I have her well set up with toys, but I could be wrong. I like to hand make her stuff, because it's cheaper and I can usually tell what she likes. I'll put cut up cardboard and (decent- non choking sized) beads on a strong and hang it for her to chew, she also loves dried corn on the cob, and I always hang or put plenty of that out for her. She has a smart toy where I put a pistachio (her favorite) in a tube with small holes and a bunch of shredded paper, however if it is too hard for her to get it out, she won't be interested in it at all. I like to eat GoGoSqueez applesauce packets, and she does too, so we'll share one and then I will let her chew up the wrapper baggy thingy. If she seems really bored I will wrap a pistachio in paper and she will go for that, but it only takes her a few minutes to get it out and then she is bored again, or so it seems. Maybe I need to step up my toy game?

Now, here is where the issue probably lies, is in her medical stuff. A while ago, maybe about 6 months or so, she was having watery poop and a little lethargy, also, a very peculiar mold would grow very quickly at the bottom of her cage where most of her poop was. I took her in to Pender Exotic and they did a crop swab and a gram stain, and told me she had yeast build up in the crop and a little off bacterial balance. They gave me two medicines to give her, as well as give her apple cider vinegar in her water. After those medicines were through, the mold was no longer occurring and her poops were still sometimes watery, but sometimes normal and healthy too. I went back for follow up and they told me she was slightly vitamin A deficient and gave me an orange vitamin goo that I attempted to give her on her food, and by force, also discontinued the apple cider vinegar. After all that, she had absolutely no trust in me at all, would rarely let me touch her, and really really hated me for a long time, because I would force her to take medicine and get in her much hated carrier to go to the vet. And when she finally started to be okay with me a little, the mold came back and her poop was still sometimes watery, sometimes healthy. Since it came back I have been giving apple cider vinegar in her water, but no significant changes have happened, and she is more lethargic than she was when the problem first arose.

She is clipped, but was flighted for about the first year of her life. I decided to clip her because her terrible two years included her flying and attacking me, attacking house guests, biting and being aggressive for no discernible reason, also flying on to door frames and chewing them to shreds.

I am currently trying to save up money to take her to the vet, because I want to have enough should it take multiple expensive and stressful vet trips.

Thank you so much for your advice, I always value the advice of those more experienced than me, because experience is so incredibly valuable, so thank you so much.

[Wolf]

The first thing that you need to do is to get this bird to an avian vet right away, waiting could easily cost her life as parrots all hide their illness until they can no longer hide it and then depending on the illness, many of them die within a day or two. So that is the very first thing that you need to do.

Keeping this bird to the light schedule that you have been, getting up at noon and going to bed at midnight is very stressful to them and may be part of the reason for the yeast infection in the first place as well as its subsequent return. Parrots are photoperiodic and they need to get up at dawn and go to sleep by full dark, and it is very important that they be exposed to the first light of the morning, the twilight period that we refer to as dawn as well as the corresponding twilight period at dusk and this needs to be done without any artificial lighting. These two periods are what sets and resets their internal biological clock.

Next, I would do some serious research into this birds natural diet in the wild and then strive to duplicate the nutritional values of those foods using the foods that are available in your area. The chop mix that you are currently providing to her is very bad for her, firstly because of the kale and spinach which are high in iron and parrots do not need very much iron in their diets. The only beans that I feed to my birds are navy pea beans and they must be fully cooked as beans also contains substances that can be toxic to birds, most especially kidney beans. Many parrots love corn on the cob, but it should be sweet corn, just like you buy at the store for yourself and it should either be given raw or just lightly cooked, but never dried corn.

I don't use pellets for any of my birds, I do not like them, instead I give my birds a seed mix that does not contain soy or sunflower seeds and I only feed them this for their dinner and I do add one or two nuts to the seed mix for my Senegal. A quality seed mix or a quality pellet should make up no more than 30% of your birds daily diet. The rest of their diet should be organic fresh raw fruits and vegetables and some partly cooked whole grains, perhaps some sprouted seeds and a few thoroughly cooked lentils. If you use a quality pellet you will not need to add additional vitamins and minerals, but if you do not use pellets then you will need to give them an avian vitamin/mineral supplement a couple of times a week.

While I do use a full spectrum light for my birds, I use it because it help them to see things properly and not for trying to replace the UV that is found in sunlight as those claims are bunk. The full spectrum light must have a CRI of 94+ with a K Temp of 5000 to 5500, preferably closer to 5000. Any other range is dangerous for the bird. I also do not put the light any closer than 3 feet from them.

I hope that these things will help you and your bird, but the first thing is to get this bird to the vet before she dies.

[Pajarita]

Wolf hit the nail on the head with all the wrong issues so I only have a couple more comments to make.

Dry corn is, with unroasted peanuts, the number one source of aspergillus, a fungus that not only produces a fungal infection (yeast is a fungus so, most likely, what they found was aspergillus in her crop) but also produces a deadly toxin called aflatoxin which destroys their liver. You need to stop feeding her dry corn ASAP! I had a rescue ex-breeder OWA that died of it so, please, ask for a bile acids test when you take her to the vet (and I second Wolf's urgency in doing this, my dear, because a lethargic bird is, without the shadow of a doubt, a sick bird!).

Kale and spinach are high in iron (which also destroys their liver) but while kale is moderately high, spinach is also very high in oxalates which inhibit calcium absorption so they are double-whammy dangerous, especially when you feed them everyday.

The light schedule you have her on does mess up her endocrine system as well as depress her immune system. The point of this comment is that you can medicate a sick bird against a pathogen but unless their immune system is strong and working as it should, the medication would only be a temporary solution because, as soon as you stop- giving it, the weak immune system will allow the body to get infected again.

Please, please, please, don't wait until you have enough money to take her to the vet! Put the charges in a credit card and, if you don't have any with enough credit on it, ask somebody to allow you to use theirs or ask the vet if you can be put on a payment plan. Your bird sounds as if she has been sick for a long time and you can't wait a single day more.