by Pajarita » Sun Nov 13, 2016 11:47 am
Welcome to the forum, Marley and Betsy! I would definitely feed him gloop but I would make two different recipes for him. A 'normal' one with lots of produce for breakfast and all day picking and another one, higher on protein, for dinner. For the dinner gloop, I would use only grains without produce and make it with grains or seeds that are higher in protein - I would cook quinoa and hemp seed and mix them with cooked grains like wheat, oat groats, etc as well as add some flax and sesame seed to it. But, I would also take him to an avian vet because something is not adding up. For one thing, beaks don't grow fast enough for the 'pattern' you mention - it takes about two years for the beak to grow from bone to tip so the crack 'reappearing' four times in 1.5 year doesn't sound right to me. For another, unless the original crack reached all the way up into the bone or destroyed too many of the blood vessels and nerves that are inside the hard keratin covering (rhamphotheca), the crack should disappear as it grows because there is no such thing as a 'weak' beak unless we are talking a dietary deficiency or a metabolic condition. And, if the trauma was so extensive, the crack would never disappear to begin with .(it's like when you damage a nail bed and the nail never grows back 'right' again). But, in any case, nowadays, even permanently cracked beaks can be fixed (they use wire or glue to hold it together or apply composite on it).