Amazon Weight

gazzington

Regular Member
Hi. My 5 year old amazon eats Harrisons pellets, and has fruit and veg twice a day. The vet said that he is too heavy and may have high cholesterol, and he has just sent off a blood test to examine further. The problem with lupin is that he is lazy and does not exercise much. He has a massive macaw cage and is out of his cage for 4 hrs every day. He hardly flies and just likes being picked up and carried about. His normal daily diet is heated up frozen sweetcorn, peas, carrots and red pepper. We add fresh red chili, radish and plum. He occasionally has pasta and pulses. He has access to Harrisons pellets all day.
Just hoping somebody could help us.
 
Hi Gazzington and :wave: welcome.....what sort of Amazon do you have and how much does he weigh? Do you weigh him regularly??
They can turn into couch potatos ...can you encourage him to do more....does he have a stand or Java tree to go on when he's out.....can you recall him to fly from his cage to that and back....does he like climbing? Does he have a boing or swing, or ladders...anything that you can do to get him moving and flying will help.

As regards to diet......perhaps need to lower the fat intake...so cut down the amount of pellets...and don't let him pick at them all day...also limit nuts. Have you tried feeding more beans and pulses ...upping protein levels, especially sprouted ones.
Also Ammies need higher amounts of Vitamin A so red/orange bpveg and fruits such as sweet potato, butternut squash, sweet peppers, cantaloupe melon, along with broccoli, spinach.

Let us know the results once you get them.

I will also tag @DizzyBlue ...an Ammie fan, and excellent person to advise in diet for them
 
to lower the cholesterol your going to be making porridge with water (birds can't digest milk lactose intolerance going on) works on birds just like it works on humans.
your going to have to devise few games to play that involve flying as well as playing on the floor say a game of catch with a paper ball.
I play a game with my amazons take them to the other side of the room and then its a sing and dance bit of fun and at the end its "one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and off we go" and i send them into forward flight - never obviously launch them but get them excited to take off and i run to the other side of the room with them. The other thing is that even flapping sessions (I do it with little Henni as she is none flighted) and we play the lift game I raise my hand and every so often slightly tilt it so she has to rebalance herself.
 
@TomsMum lol stop tagging already here :)
hows it going gassington haven't seen you for a bit and tis lovely to see you online
 
Other than having a chubby amazon, we are good here. I haven't been on forums as much since my son was born almost a year ago. Time goes too fast! Thanks for the advice though. Does our vegetable selection sound OK though. Maybe I should take out sweetcorn as it's sweater?
 
Sorry @gazzington bossy conure here keeps grabbing my iPad and is giving me a headache! ..didn't read your avatar properly....me thinking you were new....and of course you've been a member for a good while :biggrin:
 
@gazzington are you still using your hotmail account?
I have a spreadsheet breakdown in excel format of all the fruits and veggies has the vitamin, mineral and trace elemental breakdown plus calorific contents it may help you ... yes i am that sad i did a huge multi page document lol

if its the same email account just say yes and i will bounce it over from my email account its way too big to get on here
 
Hi that would be great and yes I do still have the same account.
We do have a table top java tree. I might put that at the other end of the room and place him on it. That way he will have to fly to get back to his cage to get his food! In his cage he has loads of stuff which he does enjoy swinging upside down on
 
the weight of the blue fronted are 9.7 to 18 oz (275-510 grams) with an average of 14.1 -15.2 oz (400 - 450 grams) if this helps and its nice to see you :thumbsup:back
 
email on its way :thumbsup:
the document errr goes off the page to the right hand side so use the slide bar and it also has multiple tabs at the bottom of it with each one named as to what food items it covers
 
i don't sleep much lol and we needed something that we could nosy through for birds that has limited diets so we could find out what we were missing in the old vitamin mineral department
that is version number 4 number 5 is being worked on lol
 
Matter of interest, I have always been told by vets that harrisons pellets are best but are there other brands lower in fat? Also I remembered that i give him nutraberries as a treat, maybe I should cut back on those.
 
Pellets are often championed by vets...as are Nutriberries, because they supposedly have a balance of nutrition and vitamins, etc which birds need...... Whether they are better or not than traditional foodstuffs is a matter of personal opinion and experience. If you feed a balanced seed mix plus supplements...then it's not really any different to the processes to make seed, nuts and other ingredients into pellets.
Amazons have a greater tendency and issue with fat in the diet than other species, too much fat can lead to fatty liver disease. Hence a higher in protein diet is recommended...with some pellet manufacturers producing hi-pro versions. The caveat I always look at with pellets, is whether they use artificial colours, preservatives, and also the salt content...and the peanut content.
Are you offering more than the recommended portion size of Harrisons? you could conside cutting down on the amount of pellets, and replace with more pulses, sprouted seeds and vegetables.
 
To be honest he somtimes only eats a few pellets a day as he prefers fruit and veg. Whats the daily diet most amazon owners on here provide for their birds?
 
I feed Beaphar pellets which comes with a scoop telling you how much to feed for each species, mine don't have pellets everyday though, the main part of their diet is chop, there is a thread on chop in the food and diet section if you wanted to look, they have that in the morning with fruit and they get other bits through out the day like pasta, eggs, birdie muffins, potato cakes whatever I make then they get their portion of seeds or pellets in the evening
 
Mine have a mixture of a good fruity mix and pellets but mainly fresh food. I prefer that my birds get a mixed variety of textures as well a balanced diet.
 
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