Day 1 of Food Management

[Pralina]

So to not pollute the Happy New Year topic, Im starting over here as I eagerly want to hear your advice on my new food management resolution for my birds.

Here is some information I was referring to start off:

http://www.onafricanwings.com/FoodManagement.htm

Also, just to let you know, my 2 old lovebirds are not part of this "experiment" as their food is already specifically mixed and weighed every day, so they remain on free feed... for now at least.

So we today, January 1st, Pesho, Akilles and Echo did Day 1:

- this morning i weighed the birds after their morning poop (they had no food in their cages overnight) and their weight was normal
- I gave them a breakfast bowl, containing about 10% of each bird's weight (it is MORE than required, but I decided to let them pick and choose what they prefer for today): so that would be about 5-6 Harrison's pellets (3 for the ringneck) = 10 grams, plus about 15 grams of vegetables (sprouts and carrot rounds).
- they went, they looked, the munched a bit but looked a bit surprised that THIS WAS IT!!!! No full bowl of pellets + another full bowl of sprouts, nono, this is IT! So I had to leave in the bowls for about 1 hour - 1 hour and a half... observing that everybody had seen and possibly eaten something!!!
- then I removed the bowls, weighed the remainder in each one... ok they really didn't eat much

During the rest of the day, all pellet bowls were removed from the T-stands and cagetops so no more buffet....
At one point in the afternoon my boyfriend chose to give them a bowl of pellets for 1 hour only... to see if they're hungry perhaps? They actually seemed ok, didn't overeat... so bowls removed again!

Finally tonight, as we speak, they were weighed again and given a bowl of pellets (about 10 each) and some papaya, back to their cages to eat for an hour. Then bowls removed and it's bedtime....

So this is for today.

Also I'd like to say that we do trick train our birds, with a clicker training, we are just starting and its really the basic tricks, wave, turn around, etc... We do 1 session per day, and the treat of predilection for the moment is sprouted sunflower seeds or sometimes an almond.... so ...
That's where we're at!

I'd be glad to get some advice for the next days.

[CheroneseGirl]

I found additional information & hope the following link helps viewtopic.php?f=17&t=430

I'm torn! I've always free fed my parrots pellets but recently have been considering food management. I'm apprehensive and frankly, scared I'll screw up if I attempt to manage their food. I've read some good points and reasons why people do what they do and most seem valid, beneficial points/reasons.

My parrots seem to be motivated most by getting my attention and watching me making a big fuss about how well they're doing, sooooo, this is what I'm doing right now:

I'm going to continue free feeding pellets.
I'm not going to continue feeding them fruits & veggies through out the day and will limit these to night feedings just before bedtime, as does Michael (he mentions this in the link I provided above).
I'm going to continue making a big scene when they're doing well and continue offering treats during training sessions.

Good luck

[Michael]

I'm going to continue free feeding pellets.
I'm not going to continue feeding them fruits & veggies through out the day

Actually, this is pointless. It's the veggies that are low calorie and relatively harmless in terms of over-eating. It's the pellets that are so calorie packed that parrots get overweight from munching on them all day. I feed vegetables to make my parrots lose weight!

Now I'm not a fan of leaving fresh food in the cage all day (besides food management purposes) because it spoils quicker. However, having your parrot munch and overeat on carrots and broccoli won't make them fat. But eating pellets all day will. So you may want to rethink this strategy.

Folks, I'm not going to be giving forum help with food management. I'm writing a book about parrot ownership and in writing it I realized how much there is to say about food management, way more than I can put here. Also, it's a more individualized bird-specific sort of thing. The need for it is universal I think. But how exactly to implement it depends heavily on the bird. So I'm going to be a party pooper and say that because of the responsibility involved in providing sound advice on this topic, I will only be providing it in my book, dvds, and private consultations. After using food management for nearly 5 years, consulting many vets, and coaching parrot owners on it, I think I have seen a lot of the operations of it and can give you a personalized system for your bird and situation.

Others are welcome to give you their feedback and advice here as always.

[Pralina]

Cheronese girl, same here, I have been considering food management for a while now.

Ive always free fed our birds, and as I said, they are rescues in a pretty bad shape, and throughout the years we transitioned them onto pellets... Now they are healthy and even on free feeding they would do some basic tricks with the clicker training for a treat (seed).

However, I did a lot of reading and now I am convinced that it is the way I wanna go... I just wanna be sure I am doing it right.

I did read the post you refer to, and what caught my attention are the following things Michael wrote:

I only feed Kili twice a day. Once in the morning after she wakes up at 10AM. I either give her a pre-measured meal or a timed meal. If I have time to take the food bowl back out I'll give more food and take it away in a certain amount of time. If I have to leave, I will leave a predetermined amount. Then she does not eat at all until I train her at 9PM. I train her anywhere from 10 minutes to 40 minutes depending on how well she is doing. Then shortly after 10PM I put her in the cage and feed her unlimited vegetables until she is done and then cover her for bed. Notice with my method I do not have to be home mid day. Please make sure you fully understand this method and frequently weigh your bird or you could starve it. It will vary from parrot to parrot and owner to owner so you have to research this and work out your own feeding schedule.

So this kind of resumes what I am trying to do, but only with pellets and vegetables and sprouts added to the equation.

[CheroneseGirl]

Ah, ha! Wow, I'm glad that was cleared that up for me as I was close to screwing it up, anyway lol! Thanks, Michael!

I'm not a fan of leaving fresh food in cages and can see how my original statement may not reflect it. I work from home which allows me to access to the food/cages all day. Therefore, any time I'm eating fruit/veggies I offer it to the parrots.

[Pralina]

Thanks Michael... so if I read between the lines of what you're saying .... :
what you weigh precisely in portions are the pellets given at each feeding, but in the bowl I can add as much vegetables / sprouts as I want for variety morning and evening ? is that correct?

(english isn't my first language (darn french-speaking Quebec ) so maybe Im formulating this the wrong way, sorry)

But thanks for your advice anyway.... I will be reading your book with interest!

Anyhow, I am not doing food management for a weight management goal, but just for general health, particularly psychological health, of my birds.

So today was Day 2:

Im at work today, so when I got up this morning I prepared everyone's breakfast and distributed it around 9:30AM... my boyfriend being home, he will take it out of the cages an hour later...
So today I took a different approach: a bit more pellets, a bit less sprouts and veggies (but now that I know, next feeding the fresh foods will be more).

So as an example: for Pesho my alexandrine who weighs 242 grams, his bowl consisted in 10% of his body weight, for a total of 25 grams of food, 11 grams of pellets and 14 grams of sprouts and carrot.

The difference from yesterday was also that this morning everybody understood the concept of their new diet... and they actually waited for their bowls and they actually ate! They weren't starving, as they were all normal weight before feeding... it's important, I am being very careful as I do not want them to lose weight, that's not the point of the regime.

I can't wait for tonight after work, clicker training session for all 3 bigger birds!!! I'll let you know how it went!

[Polarn]

I'm going to just give a few points here, but it is by far everything you need to consider...

First off you need to be sure you do have a stable baseline for their "normal" weight, especially since your not doing this for weight management. and the stable line of normal weight is not the day before you begin a diet. I weight my birds several times each day for weeks before I even wanted or dared to try maanging their food some.

secondly, you should keep a chart of their weight, and keep the chart I usually weight my birds in the morning, right before trainingsessions and in the evenings. having two different baselines of weight (being evening and morning) the weight before training is just to see weather or not there is a difference in motivation according to the few grams up and down difference there might be when I start a training session.

I do not however quite understand why you decided 10% of total body weight were a good place to start, I started out by weighing their bowl (while freefeeding) getting a baseline of total amount of food they ate in a day (pellets that is) then devided it up into servings, then it is basically adding or removing out of that amount rather than deciding "okay their loosing weight from 10% of their bodyweight, lets add it up to 11%, I know this is basically the same thing as knowing okay I start out by giving 20grams / serving, adding a gram or removing a gram depending on weight, but knowing how much they actually ate while freefeeding gives you a decently safe place to start.

But lets say you have 25grams / serving, it is not the same if you have 20grams pellets and 5grams of veggies as it is if you have 15grams of pellets and 10grams of veggies... And while it is true munching veggies all day doesn't make em fat, it may very well give a sensation of a full tummy and not being hungry wich basically removes the reason for your wish to start with food management.

I know new years resolutions are a big thing for some (I don't really do them) and that it is fun getting a "fresh" start of the new year. I would actually recomend you to basically revert back to your normal feedingroutines and do the study up before you start managing their food, read a bit into nutrition of certain things and other things etcetera etcetera (unless you feel you gather enough information, quick enough to successfully set out a food management system that suits the routines for you and your birds while actually implementing it. Basically charts charts charts making sure weight is not gained, nore lost, knowing what weight your bird has when it is motivated etcetera are good things to start out using, then over time im sure the obsession of making sure nothing goes wrong may disappear but I like the charts, and if nothing else the weightcharts together with any notes on featheconditions/behaviors etcetera may serve you well at a vetvisit when/if the bird gets sick.

[Michael]

Without getting into the full method, basically I weight manage with pellets only. No amount of vegetables (as far as I can tell) leads the bird to being fat. In fact, more likely it would starve if supplemented by nothing else. So I feed 100% pellets at morning meal and these portions are regulated to adjust weight. In the evening I either feed just vegetables or just pellets. In effect I feed vegetables every other day so that 1 out of 4 meals is vegetables and 3 are pellets. This way the bird is basically getting 75% to 25% ratio. If I want the bird to lose more weight, I'll feed pellets every night instead of every other. Then weight goes down and motivation goes up. In the mornings I regulate weight by giving a few more or less pellets.

Feeding pellets in abundance and vegetables in limitation (unless the bird hates pellets) is entirely counterproductive because it's the pellets that need moderation the most. They are super energy rich. Think of pellets as pasta (but with some healthy vitamins and things on them) and vegetables as well vegetables. Know anyone getting fat eating nothing but vegetables? Even snacking on them all day? Then think about eating tons of pasta... see?

I don't mind sharing what I do but there is a lot of thought that goes into this so don't just imitate it without fully understanding it. If anyone wants me to sit down with them on the phone and work out a system for their bird, I offer consultations.

[friend2parrots]

hi guys,

i'm still learning about food management, and doing research on it. i too will be eager to read michael's book, and plan to go back and reread his posts on the issue, so i can better understand whats involved, as i dont know much about it.

there are other schools of thought out there regarding parrot diets that i am also learning about. grey_moon introduced in her "nutritional update" post about a month or so back the findings of Machelle Pacion, a parrot nutritionist. i checked this website out, and read several of pacion's recent blog posts. i find that Pacion has a scientifically sound basis for arguing against the idea of "meals" for parrots. there are a number of other extremely eyeopening things i learned from that site, including the idea that vegetables with high fiber (most vegetables) may not be the best thing for parrots, whose intestines are not adapted to that. see greymoons nutritional update post for more info on this.

also, i am a firm believer, both in my own life and in the care of my parrots, that exercise plays a major role in maintaining a good, ideal weight. the times in my life when i was athletic i never cared how many calories i ate. in fact i would eat like a complete pig, but when i was athletic on a daily basis, i never put on excess weight, but always stayed at an ideal weight. (how I'm coming along right now weight-wise is a different story however, lol ...have been pretty much a sedentary potato for the past number of years lol )

in any case, i would think that exercise plays a REALLY big role in maintaining parrots' ideal weight. in the wild, every single species of parrot that we keep as pets fly HUNDREDS of miles a day. it may be practically impossible to replicate this for our parrots unless they are housed in HUGE outdoor aviaries - but the fact that they aren't food managed in the wild, and the fact that they fly so much in the wild, is something to keep in mind. so i'd think that making sure one's parrot gets tons of flight everyday would play an important role in any parrot weight management program.

[CheroneseGirl]

Michael,

Can you provide us with an idea when the book/dvd will be available?

How do I go about getting additional information about private consultations ie cost for your time, general times you are available and average length of time for each consultation?