African Grey with asper diet advice

[tashjdj]

I live in South Africa and around here any info on bird diseases and feeding is minimal.

My 12 year old Grey has been diagnosed via endoscopy with aspergillosis the 4th of December 2015. She was in pretty bad shape but after two followups she has been doing fine. She is on Vfend 0.4ml orally twice a day and being nebulized with an ultrasonic nebulizer with vfend 0.2ml in saline twice a day. She eats very well and her vocalizations and are back to normal. She has also been getting her breath back quicker after exercising and the funny noises while breating are minimal at the moment.

The avian vet who diagnosed her was the first one to ever tell me about the dangers of a seed diet. I would like to know if I can safely convert my bird to a pelleted diet as she has been a seed eater all her life and if it would help or hinder her treatment. I got my bird when she was already two years old. Currently, she only wishes to consume sunflower and dried cranberries. Her interest in fruit and veg varies greatly and is minimal at best, with grapes and pears being the current favorite. Pelleted diets are not readily available here, with the only one being stocked in limited stores being Animal Zone Petline Parrot Natural Food (http://animalzone.co.za/wp-content/uploads/DATASHEET-Parrot-Food.pdf). I am currently trying to offer this to her and she seems to be trying it but in very little amounts with a lot of dust at the bottom of the cage. Her current weight is 500 grams.

Any information will be greatly appreciated.

 

[thekarens]

If you could get her to eat fresh vegetables and fruits that would be the best diet for her. A lot of birds love grapes, but there's not much nutritional value in them.

 

[Amanda_Bennett]

I just nursed my OWA through asper and in 3 months it is gone and she is now a healthy happy amazon.

Her diet is 70% fresh foods, a mix of whole wheat pasta, brown & wild rices, 15 bean mix (rices and beans cooked thoroughly) grated sweet potatoes cooked with the rice, and other veggies like beets, zucchini, yellow squash, winter squashes, carrots, peas, corn, and whatever else I have available. I mix it all together while HOT and then let cool, drain well and portion out into bags and freeze. I then take one bag out of freezer each night to defrost and that will be her breakfast and dinner for the next day.

I add fresh cucumber, zucchini, sweet & hot peppers, grapes, apples, pears, bananas, kale, romaine lettuces, and whatever other fruits & veggies I have on hand daily.

I take her seed mix out of the cage for a couple hours in the morning when I serve breakfast so she doesn't have anything except the fresh foods to eat for that time. Then I take it back out a couple hours before I serve dinner so she will be hungry when I put dinner in front of her.

It takes patients and trial and error to accomplish, but it can be done! Zilla was a seed junkie when I got her 4 1/2 months ago and now she LOVES her fresh foods and looks forward to them.

The only pellets she will eat are Golden Obles, I think because they look like Cheerios. She still gets her seed mix, NO peanuts (asper is prevalent in the peanut shells) and I only give her 1/8 cup of seed mix a day. I ration her sunflower seeds to about 6 or 8 a day.