Might Be Adopting an Older Amazon

[Thechoplady]

I hope you bring home Jasper!

 

[SailBoat]

I haven’t been on in a while, but I thought I’d post an update. Jasper had bloodwork done last week, and was diagnosed with kidney disease. We took her in three days in a row for subcutaneous fluids to see if that would improve her uric acid in her blood, but it ended up going up a bit. She started on Alugel today, and I started giving her low protein meals (she’s still on her Mazuri pellets). I’m also going to pick up flaxseed oil to sprinkle on her fresh food. I checked the bottle we already had and it tasted nasty, so I’m definitely not gonna risk it.

I know humans with kidney disease are supposed to be on low phosphorus and low potassium diets as well, but her potassium is on the low end of normal, and she’s been suffering from phosphorus deficiency since I adopted her, so I’m going to keep giving her foods with phosphorus and potassium unless the vet or her bloodwork suggests otherwise.

Oh, right, and she’s been having issues with her past few moults, so she’s been grounded for quite a while. We’re working on teaching her to go on the portable stand, but amazons seem to be stubborn little goobers.

As always, she’s taking her medicine on banana really well.

What, an Amazon not following your instructions! Our Snob, would never summit to a suggestion, after all, if it's not 'his' idea it is dead on delivery! Consider allowing your Amazon to choose where and paper under that area. He for whatever reason tends to love to drop from on-high, so that there is a clear plop sound on the paper!

Please remember that Amazon's allow us to live with them!!

 

[Teddscau]

What, an Amazon not following your instructions! Our Snob, would never summit to a suggestion, after all, if it's not 'his' idea it is dead on delivery! Consider allowing your Amazon to choose where and paper under that area. He for whatever reason tends to love to drop from on-high, so that there is a clear plop sound on the paper!

Please remember that Amazon's allow us to live with them!!

Yeah, I only have a small sample size when it comes to amazons, but Jasper is definitely a lot more stubborn when it comes to stepping up compared to the other species of parrots I’ve kept. Even Noah, the little demon, was a lot more cooperative. Her whole “refusing to step up thing unless it’s my idea” is just mind boggling to me. If she’s stranded, she steps up on the thing no problem, but if I ask her to so much as step on it for some banana during training, she throws a tantrum. I spent weeks carefully desensitizing her to the step up perch, and I’ve come to the conclusion that, like you said, it’s some sort of weird taboo or something for amazons.



Anyways, I have some more updates. Nothing big, since she’s only been on her medicine for a little over a week now. She’s doing really well, and I’ve been making sure that she gets enough fluids. I’ve been having my father give her a dish on her balcony in the morning with a bit of water in it along with roughly a tablespoon of pellets, plus some frozen fruit to help the water become “juice”, plus some other low protein foods, to help her stay more hydrated (she’s getting 1 Tbsp of soaked pellets + 1–3 Tbsps of low protein whole foods for breakfast, in addition to access to “dry” pellets).

In the evening, I’ve been giving her 1 Tbsp of pellets (measured before soaking), along with other whole foods like apple, corn, chia, blueberries, cooked broccoli, pumpkin, etc., all sitting in water. For supper, all in all, it works out to 1 Tbsp of pellets (before adding water) and 1–3 Tbsps of “non-pellet” foods. She’s definitely making far less “pellet soup” in her water since I started feeding her soaked pellets (she eats them within 2 hours, so I think I’ve narrowed in on the sweet spot in terms of how much soaked pellets and “extras” to give her per meal).

I try to change up what fruits, veggies, grains, etc., I feed her everyday. I also don’t know a whole lot about what foods may or may not be diuretics, what are known to cause osmotic diarrhea, etc. So, I try to avoid feeding her an obscene amount of any particular food. So, while I know she could probably eat at least 20 wild blueberries in a sitting, at most I’ll give her 8, or how she could eat 40 kernels of frozen corn, but I only give her four. Fingers crossed that I’m giving appropriate portion sizes of the different foods I put in her dish.

I’ll also give her “protein foods” on occasion, but only in very small amounts. For example, I might give her a single frozen pea during the day to go along with her other foods, a soaked Cheerio, 1/8 tsp of almond, 2 grams of tofu, or a tsp of multigrain bread that’s been soaked in water.

She’s been eating “dry” pellets as well, so I’m not sure what her pellet to “other” food ratio is. I know the vets I take her to in Bowmanville recommend at least 80% of a parrot’s diet be pellets, but I’ve seen other vets online recommend anywhere from 60–85% pelleted. I know there’s a lot of debate online surrounding formulated diets vs “natural” diets when it comes to exotic animals and how while it’s important that they get all the micro- and macronutrients they need, a diet too high in pellets/kibble can cause significant behavioural as well as physiological issues, like how all captive silverback gorillas have heart disease due to an imbalance in their microbiome caused by the grain-based monkey biscuits they’re fed, and how silverbacks on a diet based heavily on leafy vegetation have improved heart health and psychological wellbeing.

Tonight she had in a shallow dish of water with:
Flaxseed oil (it has a balance of omega fatty acids that are supposed to be good for kidney disease)
Pellets, soaked (1 Tbsp)
Mash (1/2 tsp)
Pomegranate (6)
Wild blueberries (5)
Asian pear (1/2 Tbsp)
Broccoli, cooked (1 Tbsp)



Dang, I sure wrote a lot about food. Probably could’ve been shorter. Anyways, she’s been slurping up all the water that’s included with her breakfast and supper. She leaves her dish nearly spotless everytime, doing her best to try to lick every last bit of food off the bottom. Well, the exception being foods she’s not a huge fan of, like the broccoli tonight. I boiled it in a dish of water for her, removed the stem, then broke it into a few “large” bites for her. I only found one piece dropped on the floor, so it appears she ate the other ones.

I asked the vet about whether she needed to go on low phosphorus and potassium foods due to her kidney disease, and the vet said not to worry about that since the levels for those nutrients weren’t high.

Oh, I guess I’ll include a “gory” bonus photo of the carnage she left in her water dish this week after an encounter with an intruder. I guess she had a fight to the death with an Asian ladybug that had crawled on her cage, and she decided to leave its mutilated corpse in her dish as a warning to others. That, or more likely the corpse got in there as she desperately tried to rinse her mouth after getting a mouthful of its nasty defence mechanism. The kid hates bugs with a passion, so I’m kind of surprised this is the first time I’ve found a corpse.

I also included a photo of a meal she had shortly after being diagnosed with kidney disease. Plus a short video of what she ate tonight.