What sort of diet should I be feeding my GCC?

[Noahjacob]

Hey everyone,
We buy some food from petsmart whenever we go, usually Kaytees, but I feel like it has too many sunflower seeds, and she dry mil gauge just seeks those out first and eats too much of them. Doesn't eat anything else until the seeds are gone. I also buy another blue bag that I forget the name of, but it has smaller sunflower seeds.

what should I be buying?

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum and thank you for worrying about your bird's diet. GCCs cannot be free-fed any type of protein food (seeds, nuts, pellets, avicakes, nutriberries, etc) because they evolved to eat mostly fruits - which means VERY low protein and fat and VERY high moisture and fiber. The thing is that most companion parrots, especially all the South and Central American ones, are 'programmed' to crave protein for two reasons: 1) is needed for life and, most importantly, for breeding and 2) rich and abundant protein sources are not common in nature and, most certainly, never available all year round so, when you free-feed protein food (fill up a bowl and leave it there all day long), they ALWAYS end up eating way too much of it. And the excess they consume goes into their livers in the form of fatty nodules which end up as hepatic lipidosis (aka fatty liver disease) which kills them before their time.

GCCs need a diet of plant material (large pieces of raw fruit and veggies and a leafy green or a cruciform -like broccoli) and just a little bit of protein food for dinner.

I feed mine gloop and raw produce for breakfast (at dawn, of course) and a single tablespoon of budgie seed mix (which has NO sunflowers) for dinner - during the spring and summer I also give them a little piece of a nut - could be almond, pistachio, pecan but their favorite is walnut and to give you an idea of the size is about 1/8 to 1/4 of a walnut.

Please do not feed her any more sunflowers, they are too high in fat and protein for them... you can use them as treats but never more than two a day (better if you use walnuts for treats, much healthier for them).