Day one of pellets

denzarki

Regular Member
So after visiting the Avian vet, we've decided to try echo on the pellet diet.. She's 400gr he said he wants her at 350gr

Ive decided to go the cold turkey route.. Got her the roudybush california mix (got some fruit and veg in it)

She went to her bowl tonight.. Routed around then looked at me and made the "i want food" tweet she does.. Breaking my heart echo! But I know this is the best route because she's extremely selective so if I mixed in seed she'd pick all the seed out and I wouldn't be able to monitor it.

So here's what I've done.. I weighed her tonight and she's roughly 400gr

I weighed her bowl with the food in that's 188gr.

I'll re-weigh the bowl tomorrow and see if she's taken any out.

I'll weigh her again in 2 nights and the bag says if she's lost 5% of her weight give her her old food back and try again later. Hopefully it won't come to that..

I may end up being weird pet owner and eat some pellets in front of her lol

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Oh and as usual she has a bowl of mixed veg too so she won't starve but I don't want her to just eat the veg to avoid the pellets

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Going cold turkey … errr not wise
If she doesn't recognise that those pellets are food she will starve herself
Put the seed back and mix some pellets in and then you slowly decrease seed and increase pellets if your feeding pellets she must have fresh fruit and veggies daily
Persuading pellets try mixing them with a little juice
 
Going cold turkey … errr not wise
If she doesn't recognise that those pellets are food she will starve herself
Put the seed back and mix some pellets in and then you slowly decrease seed and increase pellets if your feeding pellets she must have fresh fruit and veggies daily
Persuading pellets try mixing them with a little juice
I honestly think she'll pick out the seed and ignore the pellets.. Just trying out the methods on the bag..

I'll weigh the bowl tomorrow and then consider mixing, to be honest the seed mix I got her last time she don't like too much anyway so she has lost a little weight since the vets (I think 14gr)

If I have to I'll get some as30 and mix with that but I wanna see how she goes over the next 24hrs

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Weight loss should be gradual and that amount should take a couple of months rather than weeks or days so be very careful if she ignores the pellets then there will be a situation arise when not only will she be detoxing from the fat removal but also loose nutritional content due to eating far less
More exercise to turn fat into a burn off situation and increase the muscle structure and that can be done in a variety of ways
there is a fine balance to travel if you can weigh the pellets severaltimes tomorrow rather than just once and try dribbling a little something on top of a few like passion fruit juice or a spot of orange juice
 
Weight loss should be gradual and that amount should take a couple of months rather than weeks or days so be very careful if she ignores the pellets then there will be a situation arise when not only will she be detoxing from the fat removal but also loose nutritional content due to eating far less
More exercise to turn fat into a burn off situation and increase the muscle structure and that can be done in a variety of ways
there is a fine balance to travel if you can weigh the pellets severaltimes tomorrow rather than just once and try dribbling a little something on top of a few like passion fruit juice or a spot of orange juice
I appreciate your advice honestly. I'll weigh it a few times tomorrow and then make a decision. I love echo and just want whats best for her

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Afraid I am a coward with diets for birds. George should be on a diet he is huge. But, he must be in his 30's, probably lived on rubbish all his life, he is now on AS30, with fruit and veg every day, he is a poor flyer, very, very poor, so what could I do?
 
I would never advise changing feed type over night, and will back up Dizzyblue's advice, Amazons can be lazy, they need exercise they also need there bodies to adapt to new foods, prolonged over weight can cause problems but weighing the food in the bowl is not a secure way of telling you bird is eating, whats left on the floor of the cage? has your birds poop changed, is it drinking more or even less. when I have had an over weight problem with a bird I try to aim to lose 2grams in a week if over four grams I start to have concerns if six grams or over it triggers alarm bells and I will revert to more of it old diet until I have a week of stabelisation
 
Okay so reporting in.

She's eaten 15g of the 40g portion.. So she knows it's food she's just being stubborn.

She also ate all her veg (of which I put extra out for her cos I felt mean) as we speak she's just gone back down to the bowl now and has started eating it.. She's taken it to her water bowl like she does with the big pieces in the seed mixes.. Seeing her do that actually gave me a really proud feeling lol

I'm going to monitor her extremely closely aswell as check her poops.. I'll weigh her tomorrow

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I would never advise changing feed type over night, and will back up Dizzyblue's advice, Amazons can be lazy, they need exercise they also need there bodies to adapt to new foods, prolonged over weight can cause problems but weighing the food in the bowl is not a secure way of telling you bird is eating, whats left on the floor of the cage? has your birds poop changed, is it drinking more or even less. when I have had an over weight problem with a bird I try to aim to lose 2grams in a week if over four grams I start to have concerns if six grams or over it triggers alarm bells and I will revert to more of it old diet until I have a week of stabelisation
I'm looking forward to moving house so we can train her to be on a flight harness and get some good exercise. For now she never gets locked up so has free reign of the house. She flies between rooms. And we take her into the corridor every now and then for a longer uninterrupted fight

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that is good that she will fly around, the weight dose need her changing her diet, it just the method of changing her on to pellets when things can go wrong, yes harness training can start now, getting your bird to accept the harness going on and off her praising and giving treats that dose not have to be food or just a piece of dandelion leaf or spple will also reinforce her training
 
So this is the second full day on pellets (plus a bowl of veg)

She ate 23g today of the recommended 40g (and remember that's recommended without the extra veg)

I weighed her and.. Well she's heavier than day one [emoji23] so I must have got an inaccurate weight on day one (the scales did die the next morning) thankfully now she's got used to the scale and will stand on it without her flannel so I can get an accurate weight without minusing off the flannel lol

So she's currently 416g that is the new baseline lol.

==

We're not moving just yet but yes we got a new /old car.. It's a 2006 octavia vrs (Connor is a petrol head) I have a job in the city centre now so I don't drive so we're getting rid of our separate cars and sharing this new /old one lol

I have a better job now and we can start to relax a little I've come from living life having to borrow money off my family to get by because I couldn't get the hours at work etc.. To a nice paid job etc.. Things are looking good for once lol

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So pleased for you @denzarki and your own house soon? What do you do now?
I work as a software tester now.. Sometimes called a QA or software analyst. Basically I work for a software company. The software developers make software and I test it against its spec and try to break it or find bugs. So that when it gets to the customer as many bugs as possible are ironed out.

My current company makes insurance software and websites.. So when you are on a website typing in your information to get a quote, our software takes that information and runs it through an 'engine' that rates the information and spits out your premium etc.

Its well paid work but also so much better than retail which I previously worked.. I feel very lucky to have a friend who helped me get into the career

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Sounds interesting and possibly fun, trying to confuse etc. Things do sound to be on the up for you both, watch when you move the parrot 'bug' does not start biting as you have more room.
 
Just an update for you all, echo has been on the pellet (plus veg) since the start of this thread (just over a week?) she eats between 20-32g a day after weighing.

I weighed her the other day and she actual was 2g heavier so I guess she likes the pellets haha.. Although I weighed her after she had 3 pasta shells so that probably added a couple of grams to her lol.

Anyway, she's healthy and happy. And her poops are still green and yucky so I call this a success.

We go away to benidorm on Monday so our neighbour will take care of echo (this will be the 4th time she's parrot sat and echo trusts her)

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