My first conure!!

[DebsFlock]

For diet, my advice would be to start with whatever he's used to eating and aim for a diet that's dominantly good pellets (I actually have no problem with the colored ones personally) with some whole dry foods (seeds, pasta, dried veggies, grains) and then offerings of fresh fruit and veggies and sprouts.

But once they are used to eating seeds it can be hard to get them to change. Going cold turkey is risky and you need to monitor their weight They CAN starve themselves to death. I offer a mixture of pellets with other foods. Scooter never has gotten the hang of eating the pellets, but I keep offering them. He is REALLY good with his fresh foods so I don't worry as much as I would if here were a total seed junkie.

 

[Lovelyloribeth]

Ok. I'll work on it in the days to come. Hopefully he will be easy to wean since he was such a sweetie coming home.
I would clog up the forum with different posts for my questions, but I'd rather keep one. So sorry if this is getting long.
He did eat some of my banana today. And my 3 year old fed him dry Cheerios, so I gave him a few more this evening.
He is so much nicer than Sebastian, my lovebird. He's just a abnoxious lol.
I have read about grinding fruits and veggies in a food processor and adding fruit juice and freezing it in ice cube trays. And giving them a cube everyday. Ever heard of this??

 

[Trina]

slowly switch mixing some seeds with pellets and slowly increase the pellets, if he has been on seed long, or harrison sells a pellet that is for seed junkies, so with that one you can just give the pellet no need to wean off..just add him a seperate bowl for fruits my conure was 8 months old when i got him and i know he was fed seed alot he was easy to swap, they love grapes, carrots, apples, broccoli (but dont give alot cause it can cause an issue i forgot exactly what i wanna say stones) jalapeno,sweet potato,beets they love as well as bell peppers and bananas, watch the fruit though put more veggies to fruit or else they will have watery poop ...mainly a seed diet is not good for them it can cause health problems and weight issues, pellet / fruit & veggie birds live longer that seed and pellet birds.

You can also give him a little whole wheat pasta or rice, no salt or seasoning. Beans cooked throughly. My conure eats everything my eclectus eats and he passed his yearly health exam with flying colors

Keep these foods away from him Ten Toxic Foods for Bird Owners to Avoid

On grinding food I would say no don't they need to chomp and use their beak , cut just in small pieces they will pick it up with there foot this gives them some good foot exercise to...

 

[Lovelyloribeth]

I know about the toxic foods.
I will def be giving him fruits and veggies tomorrow.
He is sleeping now but earlier he was snuggling up under my chin, and like clicking his beak. I'm sure someone knows what that is.
And Also, what is the best way to introduce him to Sebastian? Can they even hang out together? Or is it best not to risk it?? I've never had 2 birds so I'm not sure how to go about it. Especially 2 different species.

 

[DebsFlock]

The toxic foods lists can be a bit deceiving and there are many nuances involved. There are a billion differnt lists and some of the foods that appear on one authority's forbidden list appear on another's recommended list. It can make you crazy. I like to use the rule that if I can eat the food in the form that it is offered, then my bird can likely eat it. The exceptions are avocado, chocolate, caffiene and alcohol, and even those are basically dosage related.

Because I am driven insane by poor/inconsistent information, I've tried to study up on the reasons behind foods appearing on one list or another. Here is a grab bag of what I have found out. Raw alliums (onion, garlic) can interfere with absorption of other nutrients and are best avoided. Salt is another dosage issue, best to avoid significantly salted foods entirely as salt is ubiquitous. Mushrooms are not a problem "because they are a fungus", they are a perfectly nutritious food. The problem is that they spoil easily and most fresh mushrooms you will find in the grocery are already beginning to spoil, so it is safest to avoid them. If you offer pasta with a commercially prepared sauce containing mushroom it is unlikely to be toxic, but watch the salt content! Raw red kidney beans and their close relatives are also toxic for humans. They can cause serious issues due to a chemical that is common in many beans but occurs in very high concentrations in red kidney beans. They should be avoided both raw and in sprouting mixes, but you will rarely see them there for that reason. The beans in sprouting mixes, although raw, are safe to feed either cooked or sprouted. Cooking destroys the chemical that causes the issues. Stone fruit pits and appleseeds are bad for birds and people alike -- again think dosage. Actually, the typical issue with stone fruits is that if you "break" the seed and then expose it to an enzyme in the flesh, you can wind up with a cyanogenic compound. So best to remove the pits. Commercial sprouts can be risky for the same reason mushrooms are, they are often spoiling by the time you get them. Spinach appears on some bad lists because too much of it can cause significant dietary imbalances. Raw tomato also appears on some bad lists because of its high acid content, which is significantly reduced by cooking. Small amounts are unlikely to be a big deal. Peanuts -- yep, peanuts -- are on many bad lists because the shells often harbor a fungus that produces a toxin. The same is said to be true of walnuts. And rhubarb isn't something you'd eat raw, it's not good for birds raw either.

You can actually make yourself crazy like this!

IMHO, at the end of the day, dosage is a BIG deal. Your conure will weigh less than 100g which is about 600 times less than what you weigh and toxic dosages will scale by at least that much! Birds are also more sensitive even than the weight scaling in some cases. You can poison a person with about six pounds of chocolate, but the equivalent dosage for a bird is so much less it is better to just avoid it. This applies for alcohol, salt and caffiene. Scooter has stolen sips of things from glasses which he should not have, but has lived to tell the tale. Free access might not end up so well.

Gee, I've only been on here a few days and I think I've already run out of most of my favorite soapboxes. I hope someone finds this useful...

 

[Lovelyloribeth]

Soapboxes....hehe! Well he did great all night. This morning hubby got up this morning and chichi said "whatcha doin" haha!! He's awesome!! I took the blanket off this morning and he fluffed up real big and was shaking really fast. He let me get him out so maybe he was excited??

 

[Trina]

Crazyconure here is the picture you requested

 

[ConureCrazy]

Thank you! Sorry for hijacking the thread, I messaged Trina for a pic of her homemade shower perch. I've seen lot's of descriptions, but no actual pictures. It seems great!