Parrot hunger strike !

[Bird woman]

Now that it's time to cut the carbs and protein I have a full on mutiny on my hands. The new members just down right refuse to eat there veggies unless there's some kind of carbs mixed in with it.I take pride in my cooking and creative abilities with the gang but running out of ideas. I've tried black rice, beans , sweet potato and much more with there chop , but they want there corn meal , grits and oat mash and although it's about 50 % puréed veggies I feel it's still to high in carbs. Any ideas ? BW

[Pajarita]

I just feed gloop. All my birds love it and, because it's always low in protein and high in fiber and moisture, I don't really change the recipe from one season to the other (I add more protein by doctoring the seed/nut mix they eat for dinner and the fact that the days are longer during the warm season gives them the chance to eat more gloop so the carbs take care of themselves). Have you tried adding a different flavor every day? Like cinnamon, chili powder, garlic/oregano/pepper, ginger, etc.

[Bird woman]

All over that, there favorite used to be chilis dried or crushed. I should be so luckey as to them eating glop the way yours do. Maybe I'm mixing up flavors too much? I treat them too much like children , trying to give them an ever changing variety so they don't get bored . I guess I should pay more attention to there preferences instead of grinding and purée everything so I know there getting all the different veggies down. I'm going to go back to bigger chunks and watch each carefully and keep a log. My fids waste so much food and make such huge messes that sometimes I will feed them one thing at a time by hand so there's not any bowl tossing and picking out the goodies. BW

[Pajarita]

Well, mine do get a different flavor everyday but they get the same flavors every week. I don't puree anything. All my birds eat gloop with what I call a 'rough' texture because all the grains are separate as well as the veggies. The only two veggies that 'crumble' into a bit of a paste that adheres to the other stuff are the sweet potatoes and the butternut squash - there are still small chunks of them but they 'lose the edges' (I actually cut the sweet potato chunks with the edge of the ladle I use for serving it to ensure that they get some of it even if they don't actually pick up the piece of it to eat it).

It doesn't do to worry about a perfectly balanced diet on a daily basis. Nature never meant for them to eat that way and, going by their blood work and general state of health, it appears that everything balances out in the end. It's very, VERY rare for my birds to get sick and the ones that come to me with issues all get better -they might not get back to perfect health but they do get much better (like little Pablo, for example) and, as I have been feeding them gloop for so many years, if it wasn't providing good nutrition, I would have noticed something already... I would think.