Greetings! And some questions about forpus care

[Lennie]

Mine get fruit and veggies together they seem to know what they want/require that day. Henni my elderly grey is currently really into munching fresh spinach
Sprouting things is nutritionally best.
Mine like to try and steal what I am eating so I purposefully eat healthy things in front of them to show it's food and that it's good.
You could also make chop.

How To Sprout - Step By Step Guide

Recently I’ve been asked by two members how to sprout… the basics. So here is a step by step, image heavy thread for those of us new to sprouting. Sprouted grains, seeds and legumes are a powerhouse of nutrients. Fed whilst still growing, there is no loss of precious vitamins, minerals and...

theparrotclub.co.uk

Show us your chop

If you have been sprouting, Foraging, baking or making chop let’s see those pics.

theparrotclub.co.uk

Thank you!

I made something like this:


Added some juvenile formula, my own seed mix and some of the seed mix gifted from the diet they are used to (I am not a fan, I just sprinkle some to make them more eager to eat and taste new foods)

I wanted to give them two size options. I used lettuce, blueberry, steamed sweet potato, parsley, green pepper and dill today. Both as big size and tiny chops mixed with mashed sweet potato

 

[Lennie]

Good morning! I hope everyone has a great Sunday!!

As an update:
They ate the food well. Almost all was gone around afternoon, except the dill piece. It was thrown away from the bowl they are like me, I am also not a fan of dill I think just like @DizzyBlue said, since they are juveniles that recently started eating on their own, introducing new diet works much easier. Today I gave them a mix of eggs, sweet potato, green peas, blueberry, beetroot and green pepper.

There was a problem tho. They kept jumping in the food dish whenever they eat (they like to eat together at the same time). They ate all the food, but the wooden perch and their feet were a total mess due to the food mix with mashed sweet potatoes. Whole perch was covered in food.

I pulled the perch out and washed it with white vinegar+sodium bicarbonate.

I instead moved in the classic plastic food dish with a perch on front for now so they don't get inside of it as they do with the stainless steel dish. The food all around the wooden perch and their feet health worried me about potential mold/fungus growth and negatively effecting their foot in time. I saw some parrots like eating with their foot, which does not seem like mine do since I keep watching them while eating, but they should fly away and land on a clean branch in nature and clean themself better meanwhile the cage provides limited area and the parrot has to step on the same perches/toys during the day.

Am I worrying about nonsense? Do you guys have any tips?

I will try to find a smaller food dish preferably stainless steel again. I will use the big ones for water.

 

[dianaT]

I would say don't worry just reach in & wipe the perch with a damp cloth if its too bad and then daily perhaps a better clean of it.

 

[DizzyBlue]

Some eat holding food some don't some learn as they go along.
Mine don't like to hold mushy stuff. Mine will clean their feet themselves plus diving in the water bowls apparently serves two purposes to get clean and have a great time making a mess.
Just wipe the perches daily as @dianaT said.

 

[Lennie]

Dear friends,

I hope you are all doing well.

It has been 5 days since I home my new parrot friends. They are absolutely adorable. I try my best to prepare them great dishes with veggies fruits herbs fortified food and seed mix I made. I did not use the seed mix breeder gave me and they don’t care not having it in their dish

I try to change at least some ingredients everyday. Today they got lettuce, carrots, purslane, strawberry, hard boiled eggs, cucumber and apple. Also I added an aniseed piece as en extra:

Yesterday they got purslane, lettuce, green pepper, blueberry, sweet potato, banana, beetroot, cucumber, and parsley:


I try my best to provide them good food

One question that I have is, they seem to be happy and doing good, but their beaks don’t look that good. It looks flaky and weak:


How long would it take to have a nice looking beak? Is there anything that I can do to make it look better? Is there anything like growing their adult beaks just like changing their feather and this is it?
They dont show much interest to cuttlebone. I also ordered a %100 organic pellet food I found which is formulated with the assistance of uni professors and avian vet. I will add it to my dishes for variety once it arrives to make sure they get enough vitamins

I bet it is a long time journey to have good looking beak but I would appreciate some help. Please let me know if visiting an avian vet is required for this

 

[dianaT]

All looks great, beaks do go flaky they sort themselves out. Gorgeous little birdies.

 

[Lennie]

All looks great, beaks do go flaky they sort themselves out. Gorgeous little birdies.

Thank you Diana

It is relieving to hear. I try my best for these two

Is there another way of providing cuttlebone alternative? Maybe I should dry and crush my chicken’s egg shells I boiled and provide them in a dish like grit replacem as they are used to eating grit?

 

[Lennie]

Or maybe I can buy this as a replacement of grit:

https://www.versele-laga.com/en/be/prestige/products/prestige-kristalshellsanddredger

crushed oyster shells (15%), small shells, minerals, anise seeds.

 

[dianaT]

I would leave them with cuttlefish to nibble on which also keeps beaks in trim. Tie it to the side of their cage.

 

[Lennie]

I would leave them with cuttlefish to nibble on which also keeps beaks in trim. Tie it to the side of their cage.

Yea that’s what I did in the most active area they spend time at. But they don’t show any interest to the cuttlebone

 

[dianaT]

Yea that’s what I did in the most active area they spend time at. But they don’t show any interest to the cuttlebone

Give them time, they don't nibble on them every day anyway.

 

[Lennie]

Hello everyone!

Hope you are all doing great.

We almost completed two weeks together with my new parrot friends.

I started experimenting with sprouts too. So far I tried mung beans, green lentils, red lentils, buckwheat, oat groats, black rice, and chia seeds.

Oat growts did not sprout, to my surprise, as I expected them to be the easiest. Black rice sprouted but I could feed it for only two days, went bad pretty quickly compared to others. Mung beans, buckwheat and green lentils are for sure to easiest to sprout and feed. I try to include sprouts everyday in their dish. I also add them to my salads, so these little guys are a good excuse yo enrich my own diet too!

Also I work on building a trust relationship with them. They see my as the food guy, a personal chef indeed. They come to my hand and eat from my hand too. It took only two days so that’s great.

Since they come to my hand outside of the cage, I started letting them out. The only issue I have is, I have to find a way to enrich my bedroom to let them fly around better to find better places to land on. My bedroom really lacks places that they can land on. So I decided not to let them out until I figure this out to prevent potential injuries.

Any tips would be great to hear. I would also DIY some stuff if explained in detail in a message or video well. How did you end up with enriching a room to let them fly around better?

 

[dianaT]

Perhaps you could make them a stick stand they can fly to either a table top one or one that stands on the floor if you have the room. I will attach a table top one in the making using if your can use safe natural wood from for example apple/hazel/willow trees. In the past I have made floor standing ones using a larger bucket of course. You can tie various smaller branches together and hang small toys form it or millet sprays. Hope this helps a bit.

 

[Lozhinge]

Sky snakes attached to the ceiling are great places for birbs to meet up. You'll need to consider how you protect the surfaces directly underneath them!

 

[Lennie]

Sky snakes attached to the ceiling are great places for birbs to meet up. You'll need to consider how you protect the surfaces directly underneath them!

View attachment 39489

Oh my… That’s cute they are planning something!

Are they yours? If so, Do you keep all budgies together?? Arent they super loud at home this way :O

—————————

Something that I noticed, I feed mainly veggies, fruits and herbs mainly during the day and I add pellets, juvenile formula crunches and my seed mix on top as you can see from the pictures above. Oh and sprouts everyday, at least two variety.

In the afternoon , I clean the dish and fill it with only pellets, juvenile crumbles and a little bit of seed mix. They eat this in the evening and next morning.

I feed eggs once a week

I wonder, if I am overdoing the veggie/herb/fruit/sprout part everyday? Should I instead make them convert heavily on a pellet diet?

Like this morning they get these sweet potato, beetroot, parsley, cucumber, hot chili, sweet red pepper, blueberry and spinach. I added mung bean sprouts and buckwheat sprouts

Please let me know if I should cut down the fresh food feeding and lean towards pellets more. Internet can be confusing when you are not experienced enough to differentiate good info from bad one, and experience plays a big role here. I saw stuff like %20 max of their diet should be veggies and the rest mainly being pellets. I saw someone saying only pellets. Another one saying their vet recommended %50 seed %50 pellets. Some even say no pellets for parrotlets including the breeder I got them from…Confusing!
I would say mine is like %50 veggies/fruits/herbs/sprouts , %25 seeds and %25 pellets
Thank you

 

[Lennie]

@dianaT @Lozhinge I will try to enrich my room with those ideas ty!!

 

[Lozhinge]

My thought, and I'm not nutritional expert, is that if you are setting out vegetables every day and there is minimal waste, you are doing fine, better than OK. If there is little left of the veggies at the end of a twenty-four hour cycle, I'd put more quantity out
50/25/25 sounds ideal to me.

Fruit is a different matter. depending on species, In my Flock's case, I would ensure that fruit is an occasional treat, especially for budgies & cockatiels who are prone to obesity. The sugar is no good when too abundant. I don't know much about the forpus but I gather it is a dry forest species. What that means for their diet, I don't know! Perhaps it's like the kakariki, who can easily tolerate more fruit due to their incredible activity and work rate.

Eggs once a week seems fine, unless you are my kakariki, Chocobo, who would plot my downfall if she didn't get fried egg at least three days a week.

In answer to your questions, @Lennie - the birds I post pictures of are all mine unless I specifically state otherwise. The budgies, cockatiel and kakariki all share the bird room (formerly, my lounge) plus most of the rest of the house - a couple of room are off-limits, for safety or sanity reasons. In terms of equipment, I have to say that the sky snakes are one of my best introductions and the Flock all agrees.

 

[Lennie]

My thought, and I'm not nutritional expert, is that if you are setting out vegetables every day and there is minimal waste, you are doing fine, better than OK. If there is little left of the veggies at the end of a twenty-four hour cycle, I'd put more quantity out
50/25/25 sounds ideal to me.

Fruit is a different matter. depending on species, In my Flock's case, I would ensure that fruit is an occasional treat, especially for budgies & cockatiels who are prone to obesity. The sugar is no good when too abundant. I don't know much about the forpus but I gather it is a dry forest species. What that means for their diet, I don't know! Perhaps it's like the kakariki, who can easily tolerate more fruit due to their incredible activity and work rate.

Eggs once a week seems fine, unless you are my kakariki, Chocobo, who would plot my downfall if she didn't get fried egg at least three days a week.

In answer to your questions, @Lennie - the birds I post pictures of are all mine unless I specifically state otherwise. The budgies, cockatiel and kakariki all share the bird room (formerly, my lounge) plus most of the rest of the house - a couple of room are off-limits, for safety or sanity reasons. In terms of equipment, I have to say that the sky snakes are one of my best introductions and the Flock all agrees.

That is so cool. You have so many! Ive just seen you mentioning the names of them all

I kinda wanna get myself another species too but I stop myself. The idea that, I prep the food anyway so I will just chop a bigger portion, I have commercial foods and the seed mix, I clean the cage and vacuum around the room everyday. So it will be the same type of workload but I like the idea of potentially having my own baby birds in the future. Dang it Lennie! Quit the idea of having another species :')

How do you handle the holidays or potential travelling? I found fishroom was too limiting for holidays but healthy fish can easily go through a week without any food. Birds seem to require daily, or in my case twice a day, filling of food dish and changing the water. Bird-sitter?

Another q is; how messy and dusty are cockatiels? I love the fully yellow ones. It is my fav colour on animals

 

[Lozhinge]

That is so cool. You have so many! Ive just seen you mentioning the names of them all

I kinda wanna get myself another species too but I stop myself. The idea that, I prep the food anyway so I will just chop a bigger portion, I have commercial foods and the seed mix, I clean the cage and vacuum around the room everyday. So it will be the same type of workload but I like the idea of potentially having my own baby birds in the future. Dang it Lennie! Quit the idea of having another species :')

How do you handle the holidays or potential travelling? I found fishroom was too limiting for holidays but healthy fish can easily go through a week without any food. Birds seem to require daily, or in my case twice a day, filling of food dish and changing the water. Bird-sitter?

Another q is; how messy and dusty are cockatiels? I love the fully yellow ones. It is my fav colour on animals

Holidays I'm sort of done with now. Part of the reason is, I travelled abroad for work - a lot. A lot of flying, a lot of driving. I don't miss being away from home these days. I don't miss the hassle of travel, accommodation, suitcases, the lack of any connection with anywhere.
Don't get me wrong, there were parts of doing my job I was thrilled with - I saw places you just don't get to see. But that's over and I'm happy about that.

Tiels are not my specialty, I've only just got one I can tell you that Coco was "dusty" but that was mainly because before me, she'd never been let out of her cage. The moulting, dust and feathers that started to appear once she was allowed to roam had to be seen to be believed but that's all settled now. She's not budgie-tidy in terms of poops - they are difficult to clean up, to be honest. I'd struggle if I had eighteen cockatiels

I got interrupted typing this reply. Chocobo wanted to play the Daddeh-pick-it-up game with her nutriberry