i need help with umbrella cockatoo diet.

[S Hahn]

We just got a 25 year old male umbrella cockatoo. he has been thru 11 homes and now he is with me and will stay till i am dead!!!! Now, i need help!!!!! the internet is good but confusing. For instant birdtricks. com said never feed your parrot peanuts. easy enough, but when watched some training videos he is feeding the bird peanuts because thats all he likes, the sight says absolutely no peanuts?? Nigel previous home all he ate was people food. we have had Nigel for 6 months now, when we picked Nigel up to come and live at our house he had Cheetos in his bowl for breakfast, i dont want to feed him those things but thats all he will eat. I have spent 100's of dollars on pellets, he wont eat them. I have made him all kinds of good stuff and he wont eat it. We just took Nigel to the vet and he did not seem to upset about his diet, his exact words were " its hard to teach an old parrot a new diet". he does not like anything other than people food. he really wont even eat seeds. I NEED HELP!!!! every web site is different and so on. So if anyone has good advice on umbrella cockatoo diet please help. i have tried a lot and i am a very patient person, my patient is starting to run out, i feel like i am not doing whats best for Nigel. i just want to make Nigel a good parrot you can play with and so on. His behavior is getting so much better but i really believe he does not feel good and if we do get him on a good diet it will help with everything. Thanks in advance and i need help!!!

[Bird woman]

Wow, first of all was this regular vet or bird doc.? Seems that if he was an avian doc. He would have lined you out on the food thing or at least set you in the right direction. If your bird is used to being fed people food then you can cook healthy for him. Eat with him,they always want what we have so use that to your advantage getting him to try new things. The doc. Is right in it's hard to teach your bird to eat right but repetition is key. It's taken me as much as a year to straighten some of my too's diets out and it's always a work in progress . There's a lot of great recipes here and on the net to start experimenting with. If your bird eats bread as most do , then make a healthy bird bread recipe . Does your bird like corn as most do , then make a chop starting with mostly corn adding more nutritional ingredients over time. All the pellets you have bought you could grind a few at a time to bind a vegetable gloop together . Over time they become familiar with the taste and will eat it on there own. There will be a lot of waste so don't get discouraged , it takes along time. Tell me what he likes and will eat and I can better give you some ideas and recipes. Get him off the crap now or you will have problems if there's not already lurking inside. I have spent thousands on just one bird trying to save her after many years of burgers fries and Doritos . Any thing I can do to help . BW

[S Hahn]

Bird woman thanks, after reading this i sat down next to Nigel and i started to eat some parrot pellets (actually they were not that bad) and i started to offer him some after i ate it, he started to eat them. Cool huh, i am realizing my Nigel is a pain in the butt but he is worth it. Yes this was an Avian vet, the more i think about it, can it be a case that Nigel does not know its a food to eat??? since you sent me the message this morning i have been eating in front of him and he has been trying new foods??

[Bird woman]

What about the weight thing???? and consider your self in the top 1% bracket of parrots owners if you've got him eating pellets and new foods on the first try. That's almost unheard of. Most of us labor for months if not years to straighten out a rescues diet, with much money in wasted food. BW P.S. Did you have blood work done at the vet????

[S Hahn]

blood work was done the first vet visit and he is all good, I had him weighed again and he was 1035 grams. The Vet was not concerned because of how big Nigel is. You know way more about parrots then i do but if you look at Nigel he is such a big Umbrella Too. When i took him to the Vet there was two Mollucan Too and three Umbrella Too and Nigel towered over all of them. I took a pic of him next to a Mollucan Female so you guys can see the difference. I will post pics when i figure out how to do it.

P.S. he is still not eating the pellets when i leave it in his bowl, he will only eat them when i am eating them.

[liz]

He will eat more healthy foods when eating with his human. The more fruit and veggie they get the less pellets he will eat. He will probably eat just a few to keep from rumbling when the fruit and veggie run out. You can also give him gloop with his breakfast.

I don't take the fruit and veggie plate away when I feed the evening nut and seed mix. They go back and forth between the plates until "nite nite" time when they put themselves to bed.

Rainbow is as bad as me when it comes to eating at night. He will go to his seed dish in the dark to eat snacks so I leave the seed plates until morning. He has done this in all the years I have had him. Myrtle does not eat at night.

[Bird woman]

I also leave the fresh veggies out and throw them away at night. A few night snackers in the flock and I leave a few Harrison pellets. I sure would like to see the picture of this giant umbrella too. I have 2 mollucan hens and one is quite large at 950 grams and I thought she was big, it's hard for me to imagine how big yours is we always have dinner with the gang and breakfast is on there bar stools so I can attempt to keep the mess in one area. also if he's eating the pellets with you then he's going to develop a taste and familiarity for them and will eat them on his own. Hope you like the taste of them , it shouldn't take to long. BW

[Pajarita]

I had two umbrellas, both females and both came to me as adults from a pet store where the owners had left them on consignment. They were fed just seeds and kept in a cage in a dark corner so I bought them both. I taught them to eat good food, got them friendly with people and sent them to a cockatoos-only sanctuary where they are still doing VERY well.

Now, I don't have a huge experience with toos but all the ones I've had (2 umbrellas, 1 lesser, 1 Eleanora and 1 citron) were excellent eaters so it's just a matter of persistence and time. All of mine ate gloop and raw produce for breakfast (and they are such good eaters that they actually eat the greens first!) and nuts/seeds for dinner (but it's mostly nuts). The trick is to wait about an hour or so after dawn (so they are good and hungry) and eat the raw produce with them so a to get them into the habit (you won't need to do this forever, he will eat on his own once he gets 'into it'). Make a simple gloop with just grains and fresh corn, peas and carrots mixed in and add a small sprinkle of seeds to it and leave it there all day long even if he doesn't touch it. Don't give him any other food during the day and, in the evening (actually, when the sun is halfway down to the horizon), take away the gloop and produce and give him his nut/seed mix (only enough to fill his crop) and, once he falls asleep, take the bowl away so he has nothing to eat in the morning until he gets his produce and gloop. If you keep on doing this, he will start eating it.

I don't know why the vet did not make a big deal about his diet, he should have because, obviously, it's a terribly unhealthy one and it needs to change asap.