Reply #6: Well, it is funny, when we first got Cookie [View All]

he was firmly on a seed diet... sunflower seed diet. That was the first to go. Yes, they get high from sun flowers.

Three years ago bird had feathers falling apart in the shower. He cannot reach his tail feathers, so every molt he goes to the shower and I clean them... from the chitin layer. Well off to the vet we go.

They did a full work up. As a vet you can imagine what was running through their minds. Nope, was good ol' fashioned malnutrition. And damn it, we tried for years to introduce him to pasta, beans, cooked vegies... you mention it. He'd have none of it.

So we came home from that, and we knew he was starving to death. A matter of days most likely. I got Ezekiel's cereal, since it looks like seed, and we basically told him, that's it. Well we risked bird not eating. At first he looked at it funny. Then he tried a few, then he ate a full bowl of the stuff. I added things over the course of the next few months. These days he begs for steak, fruit, what have you... and have fine table manners. He will NOT eat until we seat down to eat.

Connie started eating a mixed diet so she was easy... and tuky... he is more of a carby bird, but he is 23, I give him a pass... but they have not eaten a seed in now years.