Cuttlefish bone

[Bandit]

Bandit has one and he has gone nuts on it. It's a fairly big one and I got it the day I got him, and it's almost half gone.

Is it normal that he chews on it SO much?

 

[weco]

Cuttle bone is a natural source of calcium, made from cuttlefish bones. If the bird is calcium deficient, he would probably be predisposed to go after it.

Some birds just seem to enjoy tearing cuttle bones up.

You might want to break one into about 4 pieces & give one piece a week to the bird.....if the bird is making up for a deficiency, there will be a point where the calcium will not be of such interest...however, if it's being treated as a toy, then simply taking the cuttle bone away should solve the problem.

 

[Kiwibird]

Kiwi likes to destroy cuttlebones for the sake of destroying them. He doesn't actually ingest much, just tears them up (flings huge chunks of it everywhere). I agree with weco that if the bird is actually eating cuttlebone in huge quantities, there is likely a deficiency that should be addressed. If not, he may just enjoy ripping them up. The best thing to do is to keep your eye on him and see what exactly he is doing with the cuttlebone to make it disappear that fast (senselessly destroying or actually consuming huge quantities).

Also, I'm not entirely sure where conures are native to (I think south America right?), but there is "Manu clay" blocks sold for parrots as well. I believe they are only intended for the south American birds that eat it naturally, but I notice Kiwi doesn't destroy the clay blocks, and one of those will last for months in his cage (he just nibbles on it here and there). There are also commercially made mineral blocks for other species of parrots that are a little harder than cuttlebone, thus more difficult to for them to destroy.

 

[Bandit]

Thanks! I'll break it up in the morning and give him smaller pieces.

I'm not sure if it's a calcium deficiency or just wanting to play with it. He'll be sitting on his perch almost asleep, and then he'll randomly waddle over and gnaw on his cuttle bone. Then afterwards, he makes this grinding sound with his beak. Not the happy/content grinding, it's different to that. Kind of hard to explain but i'll get a video of him doing it tomorrow.

 

[Grinder]

Make sure your bird is exposed to proper full spectrum lighting or they won't be able to convert all that cuttlebone they are eating.