Maintaining Weight on Vegetable Heavy Diet

[munch]

Our CAG was underweight so we started feeding her what she liked, which was meats, eggs, cheeses, etc. She brought up her weight, looked nice and healthy, so we decided to try to gt her off the proteins and on to a vegetable rich diet...

 

Now my question is how do we maintain a healthy weight while feeding her vegetables? She still gets pellets and eats those as she always did but it wasn't enough for her weight before. My vet suggests only using Harrison's for everything but from reading here, a healthy diet is mostly fresh foods.

 

She doesn't touch oatmeal, cheerios, rice, pasta, etc. I'll try barley. She will nibble on baked ziti and corn on the cob (but not niblets), no potato (sweet, white, or yam).

[judygram]

Harrisons pellets are the choice of a lot of vets but if she won't eat them then try another brand but it shouldn't be the only thing she gets. Lots of vegetables are good but you should include some nuts, seeds, grains, legumes and some protein sources. My grey loves rice and any kind of pasta and she loves most beans so try a wide variety of these to see which she will eat. She should have lots of veggies but not to the exclusion of other foods and even though you have had to get her off of so much protein she still needs some.

[Dave007]

Very important here----How old was your bird when you thought he was underweight? What was the weight before and afterward? None of the foods you mentioned will make a grey gain weight. Most greys won't become obese or gain a lot of weight because of the species but other species of birds will. Any weight they may gain has to do with the size of the bird. Is he a small boned or medium boned or large boned grey? The weight is very different with these sized birds. A person can have a bird that may weigh approx 385 gms or approx 470 gms or approx 565 gms and larger. There's a big difference between giving a healthy diet and giving a weight maintaining diet. If you say she gained weight, what was she eating when that happened?

Edited June 4, 2011 by Dave007

[munch]

The vet didn't tell us exactly how much she weighed at that point; he weighed her and told us she was underweight. He showed us to feel her breastbone and explained that we should feel it but not as sharply. This was about 6 month ago. She gained weight finally over May when I added lots of proteins to her diet that she loved like chicken, beef, eggs, veal, etc. She does eat the Harrison's but not in large amounts, not enough to provide the weight gain to a vegetable diet (that was what was suggested by the vet but didn;t work for weight gain). She does love chickpeas but Jayd advised to cut back since they can block certain essential nutrients. She gets almonds and walnuts daily but it doesn't seem like it actually makes into her mouth but mostly to the floor.

 

She is currently filled out and I elminated most of the meat of her diet except for a rare occasion (under once a week for 2 weeks now). She gets daily , <1 egg, nuts, pellets, vegetable greens, and an inch of corn on the cob. Will that maintain her current weight?

[danmcq]

I can feel my greys breast bone pretty well. IMHO if you can't feel it, they are over weight.

 

Dave will have more excellent advice.

[Dave007]

Munch

 

Well, you still didn't say how old your bird was when the vet told you she was underweight. Weight varies with different sized birds. Protrusion of the keel bone varies too. All of my greys are adults and I can feel the keel bone on all of them if I feel for it. One of my greys has a keel bone that's protruding more than the others but at one time it was a bird that never flew and had no feathers. His bones still protrude but he's healthyThe biggest problem with keel bone protrusion has to do with muscle buildup. Many people who get their birds clipped when they're very young doesn't allow muscle strength of the wing areasto develop and get muscle strength. The most obvious place to see that is the keel bone. Most of those birds try to fly and instead they fall and bounce off the floor and hurt the keel bone.

I'm not gonna argue with what the vet said but he should have said that the bird is continuing to lose weight if that were the case. There's different ways to feed nuts. In your situation, you should take a variety of them, take the shells off, break them up in small sized pieces ( the size of a baked bean), put them in a different bowl and let her check them out. Leave them in the bowl. All types of nuts are excellent for birds but they have nothing to do with weight gain. The nuts simply provide vitamins. The same thing applies to veggies. Corn is useless for a bird. It provides nothing but it isn't harmful to a bird unless loads of it are given. Celery, cucumbers, lettuce are useless but it won't harm a bird if given in small amounts. None of these items have anything to do with weight gain. In the supermarket, there's bags of premixed veggies and most of the time all of them have corn in the bags. Try broccolie, kale. Give carrots, plenty of vitamins in it They won't provide weight gain. Give some human foods---clumps of pasta with some tomato sauce on it. It's messy but many birds like it. That too won't provide weight gain.

Try veggies cold, warm, raw, steamed. All of these items provide vitamins. The most important thing concerning food for a grey is the vitamin content but vitamins don't provide weight gain.

One other important thing here is that the solid foods, no matter what they are should remain in the bowl all day long. Birds don't eat like people. There is no breakfast, lunch or supper. Birds eat all day long. The only foods that should be removed are veggies when they get soggy and shrivaled up.

I would say that your bird is eating fine but eating fine has nothing to do with weight gain. You need to keep the bird healthy and not worry about weight gain. The only time you should be worrying is when a bird starts losing weight on a constant basis. That's a sign of illness

There's different ways to feed and make food.

Concerning Dan---about 3 years ago Dan posted a few pictures of a food concoction he invented. It was a great creation and to this day, I still have those pictures my bird food file. I'm gonna assume that mant people tried it and had success. I tried it and it went over real well with my birds. I also fed it to breeder birds and they too loved it.

So, take it slow. Strenght is the most important thing here.

[munch]

Dave007- Thank you. You explained clearly what my vet did not. Yes, my CAG was about 6 months old and her wings were minorly clipped whent he vet told us she was underweight. it's taken all this time for her to gain "weight." Her wings already grew back enough for her to lift, change directions while flying, and land properly (still doesn't get much height while flying but she is getting some). That could be why we suddenly don't feel the keel bone as sharply. She gained muscle. She seems healthy and is eating all the right foods now. Taking your advice, that is the key importance- eating and eating healthy rather than pushing weight gain. I may even search for a different avian vet next time (although this guy is considered an avian specialist by several sites and in walking distance). I'll cut out the corn, i know it didn;t provide anything but calories and fun (she loves ripping it to pieces).

 

Thank you!!

 

Danmcq- Can you repost the pictures or add the link to that thred of your food concoction? I've tried doing a search for a mash and other food ideas but some are either tasty treats like in the recipe sticky or too complicated for me to do on a regular basis other than Jayd's and Spock's parrot menu (thank goodness for that!).

Edited June 7, 2011 by munch

[Stanley]

You have got some interesting and informative tips from the moderator of this site and hope you would act upon the advice and thanks for sharing the problem of underweight and i also got plenty of information from here.

[Chris Broad]

Well no doubt that it is an interesting post and informative also. Everyone should be aware with it. Thanks for the sharing such a useful information. I learned lot from it.

[Doug]

Just curious about this forum - are there moderators to eliminate obvious spam (like Stanley & Chris Broad above) where the only purpose is to provide a link to an unrelated business?

[Dave007]

Just curious about this forum - are there moderators to eliminate obvious spam (like Stanley & Chris Broad above) where the only purpose is to provide a link to an unrelated business?

 

To catch people from posting obvious scams or unrelated info?-----no. Everyone is allowed to join a board and when their true intentions can be seen, ( which shows itself pretty quickly)either the moderator or admin gives a warning to the person to stop. If that doesn't do the trick, the person is banned. This kind of situation happens on 100s of boards.

You having a particular problem?

[Doug]

No problem. I have been reading through a lot of threads getting ready to bring my TAG home (in less than two weeks!) and I noticed a lot of these kind of posts. The poster says something completely generic, usually in somewhat broken English ("I really appreciate all of the good information. It will be very useful to me going forward.") or something pulling in a key word or two ("I am really impressed with the information about maintaining weight. I will definitely follow this in the future.") These posters never have anything about parrots in their signature, but they always have a link. (When I kept a blog long ago, I used to get a few of these a week - usually bots.)

 

It is easy enough to ignore this kind of post. I was just curious about the process on this board.

 

(And, yeah, unfortunately it happens EVERYWHERE! Ugh.)

[Dave007]

No problem. I have been reading through a lot of threads getting ready to bring my TAG home (in less than two weeks!) and I noticed a lot of these kind of posts. The poster says something completely generic, usually in somewhat broken English ("I really appreciate all of the good information. It will be very useful to me going forward.") or something pulling in a key word or two ("I am really impressed with the information about maintaining weight. I will definitely follow this in the future.") These posters never have anything about parrots in their signature, but they always have a link. (When I kept a blog long ago, I used to get a few of these a week - usually bots.)

 

It is easy enough to ignore this kind of post. I was just curious about the process on this board.

 

(And, yeah, unfortunately it happens EVERYWHERE! Ugh.)

 

Well, the only thing I can say is to ignore those types of things. If you have qustions about new birds coming home or diet or cages or health or a nursery or medical info, etc I'm positive that you'll find it here. There's thousands of posts, answers, questions , help and opinions in a load of specialized rooms to post in. All grey info concerns CAGs and TAGs. Many people have both--young or rehomed. There's something for everyone here.

You can always contact the admin or mods here if you're bothered by something.