I recently got 2 ring-necked parakeets (one female and one male) and they don't fully trust me yet. the weather is getting colder but I make sure to keep the parakeets warm by closing the curtains and covering the side of the cage that faces the window by a cloth. They don't eat anything except for cooked rice and sunflower seeds. It's been two days since I noticed that their droppings seem a bit watery. Today I had to go out in the evening and when I came back there was a foul odor in my room. I feel like they're sick but I don't know what's wrong, can anyone help me?
My parakeets droppings seems watery and there's a foul odor in my room
- Thread starter uvs
- Start date
cooked rice can only be fed fresh. It goes bad within hours even when fridge. Burds get sick from this my h easier than people.
A diet of rice and sunflower seeds will not cut it at all. You need a healthy seed mix. Offering many fresh vegetables and leafy greens. Boiled egg maybe twice a week, and fruit twice a week. Cooked quinoa, cooked legume, cooked lentils, cooked oatmeal all can be offer a few times a week with fresh veggies. We have a forum on parrot safe foods. But I can get links if needed.
Bird don't like being in dim or cave like conditions. They need at least medium light .
Poop can bad from what you are feeding. Or now they could have gotten sick from what you are feeding.
Silver sage Aviary has great articles . I tried to link the one on diet, but I suggest reading them all
A diet of rice and sunflower seeds will not cut it at all. You need a healthy seed mix. Offering many fresh vegetables and leafy greens. Boiled egg maybe twice a week, and fruit twice a week. Cooked quinoa, cooked legume, cooked lentils, cooked oatmeal all can be offer a few times a week with fresh veggies. We have a forum on parrot safe foods. But I can get links if needed.
Bird don't like being in dim or cave like conditions. They need at least medium light .
Poop can bad from what you are feeding. Or now they could have gotten sick from what you are feeding.
Silver sage Aviary has great articles . I tried to link the one on diet, but I suggest reading them all
- Thread Starter
- Thread starter
- #3
I've tried feeding them veggies and fruits, but they didn't eat it, what do I do about it?
- Aug 30, 2021
- 5,782
- 7,106
- Parrots
- Ziggy, Kai, and Seiji (blue, yellowface, and dilute budgies)
Jasper (yellow-naped amazon)
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Cricket (pacific parrotlet)
You can sprinkle seeds on the veggies or eat them in front of your bird to make them interested and want to steal it. Because fruit has a lot of sugar, I consider it more of a treat than part of the daily diet. If your bird likes it, great, but if they don't, that's fine. Definitely switch their diet. And take them to a vet once you notice symptoms of sickness.
Last edited:
Click the blue link at bottom of my post. It takes you to an article on seed o ky esters with suggestions.
Offer veggies on a plate so they can explore. Bell pepper with seeds is liked by most. As are peas, fresh or thawed frozen, fresh corn cut off the cob ( its good to just get them starting tasting different things, but not the most nutritional) try poking a broccoli or cauliflower spear through cage bars, often they will explore, same with a leaf of romain or Swiss shard, leafy greens actually have great nutritional value.
Keep offering it can take time.
Get a better seed mix that has pumpkin seeds, squash seeds, safflower seeds, and other types mixed in, that helps a little. Offer cooked quinoa instead of rice. Steam and mince some vegetables and mix in, and serve warm. Eat some in front if them.
What w a breeder feeding them? What were they fed before you got them?
Offer veggies on a plate so they can explore. Bell pepper with seeds is liked by most. As are peas, fresh or thawed frozen, fresh corn cut off the cob ( its good to just get them starting tasting different things, but not the most nutritional) try poking a broccoli or cauliflower spear through cage bars, often they will explore, same with a leaf of romain or Swiss shard, leafy greens actually have great nutritional value.
Keep offering it can take time.
Get a better seed mix that has pumpkin seeds, squash seeds, safflower seeds, and other types mixed in, that helps a little. Offer cooked quinoa instead of rice. Steam and mince some vegetables and mix in, and serve warm. Eat some in front if them.
What w a breeder feeding them? What were they fed before you got them?
Ok i copied it from Silver Sage Aviary articles
Help! My new parrot ONLY EATS SEEDS!ā
This is one of the most common social media posts I see from new parrot owners. We all know that our parrots need a well-balanced diet to thrive and we really want to provide that but they turn up their beaks at the pellets and veggies preferring to starve and scream until we give in and bring them that horrible seed mix! Why? As a mom of humans as well as birds I can tell you both are pretty much the same when it comes to unhealthy food; they want what tastes good, not what keeps their insides functioning, and often they will choose the familiar over the new no matter how good the new thing tastes! So what do we do? Starve them until they give up? No. There are a lot of tricks I have used over the years to get the stubborn parrot (and occasional human child) to eat what they should, and I would love to share them with you.
Start with patience
If your new bird wasnāt introduced to a wide variety of healthy foods at the right time developmentally before being weaned, he will likely take a considerable amount of time to adjust to his new life and then even more time to figure out that carrots are food and not poison. Even well raised babies may choose to be picky eaters with the stress of transitioning to your home. Getting impatient will only stress you and the bird and lead to frustration that can make the whole thing take longer. Banish all feelings of guilt and do not compare yourself or your bird to anyone else or anyone elseās timeline.
Think variety
You arenāt going to try one thing at a time and hope it works, you are going to try ALL THE THINGS and see which one works.
Keep sugar content in mind
It is tempting to go straight for the foods that we like best or that we think our parrot is most likely to go for, but we donāt want to end up with a sugar fiend any more than a seed junky. Many species of wild parrot do enjoy fruit on a regular basis, but those birds not only fly miles a day to find that fruit, but they also often partake in fruit that isnāt yet ripe and therefor has a much lower sugar content than the ripe fruit we buy in the store. This unripe fruit can cause digestive issues that parrots in cages are not equipped to deal with. Our companions can suffer health problems from too much fruit in their diet just like form too many seeds so it is best to save fruit for the occasional treat and focus on veggies and sprouts.
Start with the familiar
Parrots are extremely dependent on their sense of sight to let them know what is a threat and what is not. Because of this, often the fresh food they will most easily accept is the one that looks like their trusty seed mix! Check out our article http://silversageaviaries.com/sprouting-for-your-parrots/ here on how to sprout your parrotās seed mix. For a stubborn seed eater start by just wetting the seed, then proceed to soaking, and finally on to sprouting. Usually we feed sprouts when the tail has just started to show, but when transitioning a bird onto a healthier diet it can be very helpful to feed them older sprouts as well just to reinforce the idea of eating funny looking things and even leafy things. Be extremely diligent to keep your sprouts rinsed and fresh to avoid any chance of bacteria growing in them. Always smell (or even taste!) your sprouts before feeding them to be sure they smell fresh and planty, never sour or spoiled. This is extremely important even if you have just wet the seed a little; be sure to switch it out often and never let it start to spoil! Do not wet seed mixes that include pellets or dried fruit.
Let them sit on it
When we think of feeding our birds fresh food we often think of āchopā aka fresh food diced up and served in a dish. Chop is great, but it is far from the only way to serve fresh food. The simplest trick that I use regularly is to wedge a full carrot or other veggie through the bars of the cage. Depending on the size of the bird they often use it as a perch, and we all know how eager they can be to destroy their perches! For larger birds that canāt really perch on the carrot I try to put the food right at beak level in front of their favorite perch or secure it to the perch itself. Using a vegetable as a perch is one of the most effective strategies that I have found for getting a bird to decide to try biting something.
Let them play with their food
When introducing new foods, I donāt necessarily want the bird to know that Iām trying to feed him new things, instead I prefer to pique his curiosity with a new toy that is secretly full of nutrition! The simplest form of this is just shoving a wedge through the top or side of the cage but you can also hang them from stainless steel kabobs or fill those little āhay ballsā with veggie chunks for them to pull out. If you have time and energy you can use a spiralizer etc. to turn things like zucchini into long stringy or curly noodles and weave them through the bars or drape them down from the top of the cage.
Get in their way
Once your bird knows where the food and water are you can try setting the fresh food on the dishes just to get in the way. This probably wonāt lead them to immediately chow down, but usually they will get annoyed and toss it out of the way or just eat around it. Either of these outcomes are positive steps toward actually eating the food.
Share
Sit down near them and munch on the same food you just offered them. Parrots are flock creatures and love to eat together with their flock mates.
Donāt share
Let them see that you are eating, that you enjoy your food, and then donāt offer to share it. Use possessive body language and enjoy that spinach! Let them come and check it out and TRY to get it. Pretend you wonāt let them have it. Have I mentioned how similar feeding humans is to feeding parrots? I have used this on kids as well while my husband looked at me like I was insane for pushing my childās hand away from a cucumber, but guess who loves cucumbers now?
Think of colors
Have you noticed that your bird has a favorite color? A least favorite? If you have noticed he is terrified of his red toy but loves his yellow perch, keep that in mind when choosing which color of pepper to buy this week.
Donāt forget your budget
With a parrot at home to feed the produce section at the grocery store can suddenly seem like a candy store! But remember that fresh food spoils and that the more times you cut something the faster it will go bad. A whole leaf of kale can be left in the cage all day, but kale shredded into a bunch of tiny pieces is likely to be a soft mushy mess that may even start to smell by the end of the day, and it is also more likely to draw bugs. Especially early on when you know your little one is not very likely to actually ingest much of what you offer, try not to burn yourself out with chopping, cleaning, and spending. Donāt be afraid to keep it simple while you wait for them to finally get interested enough to take a bite. Remember, if food isnāt fresh enough to look appetizing to you, it shouldnāt be in the bird cage, either.
Donāt stress the pellets
In my experience it is extremely difficult to move a bird straight from seeds to pellets, but relatively easy to add pellets to a fresh food diet for a parrot who loves to try new things. For this reason, I just wait until we have had at least some success with new foods before offering pellets. I generally start with the biggest size I can find because those seem more like toys, and then transition down to one size down from what the package recommends (so I would feed a cockatiel budgie size, etc). Remember that most commercial pellets are sold based on size not species and that they are not really complete nutrition no matter what the package says. Consider this; The bag has a picture of a lovebird from semi-desert Africa, a cockatiel from the grasslands of Australia, and a conure that lives in the rainforest canopy of South America. How could those three species possibly have all their nutritional needs met by one product when their natural diets have virtually nothing in common? Some companies have started producing species-specific pellets and I hope that trend continues but for now I focus heavily on fresh and live foods with pellets as a fun addition for variety and to fill in gaps.
BONUS
Once your feathered buddy is finally eating all the good stuff, what is the best way to make sure his diet is balanced? Do you need to buy 100 fresh ingredients and spend a whole weekend slicing, chopping, portioning, and freezing veggies so that you can freeze his meals into single portions? Well, you can if you want! I prefer not to freeze my chop because once thawed it turns sour MUCH faster than fresh food, and some parrots donāt like the texture once it has been thawed. Since one or a few birds donāt eat much each week, it can seem like a waste to buy as many things as we want our birds eating unless we ourselves want to eat all the extra veggies (which is a GREAT idea!). Instead of buying everything every week, I follow this simple formula and rotate my ingredients in and out as often as possible.
1 colorful vegetable (such as carrot)
1 green vegetable (such as zucchini)
1 hot pepper
1 dark leafy green
1 sprout
1 healthy and safe spice optional
1 fruit optional and species dependent (for example good luck getting your Cockatiel to eat fruit AT ALL, but your Eclectus can benefit from fruit more often than your African Grey)
Nuts or seeds in small quantities depending on species (for example Budgies eat lots of grass seeds in the wild and should keep some in their diet, while Macaws need the fat from nuts)
I then leave the pieces quite large to be picked up in a foot and eaten
Help! My new parrot ONLY EATS SEEDS!ā
This is one of the most common social media posts I see from new parrot owners. We all know that our parrots need a well-balanced diet to thrive and we really want to provide that but they turn up their beaks at the pellets and veggies preferring to starve and scream until we give in and bring them that horrible seed mix! Why? As a mom of humans as well as birds I can tell you both are pretty much the same when it comes to unhealthy food; they want what tastes good, not what keeps their insides functioning, and often they will choose the familiar over the new no matter how good the new thing tastes! So what do we do? Starve them until they give up? No. There are a lot of tricks I have used over the years to get the stubborn parrot (and occasional human child) to eat what they should, and I would love to share them with you.
Start with patience
If your new bird wasnāt introduced to a wide variety of healthy foods at the right time developmentally before being weaned, he will likely take a considerable amount of time to adjust to his new life and then even more time to figure out that carrots are food and not poison. Even well raised babies may choose to be picky eaters with the stress of transitioning to your home. Getting impatient will only stress you and the bird and lead to frustration that can make the whole thing take longer. Banish all feelings of guilt and do not compare yourself or your bird to anyone else or anyone elseās timeline.
Think variety
You arenāt going to try one thing at a time and hope it works, you are going to try ALL THE THINGS and see which one works.
Keep sugar content in mind
It is tempting to go straight for the foods that we like best or that we think our parrot is most likely to go for, but we donāt want to end up with a sugar fiend any more than a seed junky. Many species of wild parrot do enjoy fruit on a regular basis, but those birds not only fly miles a day to find that fruit, but they also often partake in fruit that isnāt yet ripe and therefor has a much lower sugar content than the ripe fruit we buy in the store. This unripe fruit can cause digestive issues that parrots in cages are not equipped to deal with. Our companions can suffer health problems from too much fruit in their diet just like form too many seeds so it is best to save fruit for the occasional treat and focus on veggies and sprouts.
Start with the familiar
Parrots are extremely dependent on their sense of sight to let them know what is a threat and what is not. Because of this, often the fresh food they will most easily accept is the one that looks like their trusty seed mix! Check out our article http://silversageaviaries.com/sprouting-for-your-parrots/ here on how to sprout your parrotās seed mix. For a stubborn seed eater start by just wetting the seed, then proceed to soaking, and finally on to sprouting. Usually we feed sprouts when the tail has just started to show, but when transitioning a bird onto a healthier diet it can be very helpful to feed them older sprouts as well just to reinforce the idea of eating funny looking things and even leafy things. Be extremely diligent to keep your sprouts rinsed and fresh to avoid any chance of bacteria growing in them. Always smell (or even taste!) your sprouts before feeding them to be sure they smell fresh and planty, never sour or spoiled. This is extremely important even if you have just wet the seed a little; be sure to switch it out often and never let it start to spoil! Do not wet seed mixes that include pellets or dried fruit.
Let them sit on it
When we think of feeding our birds fresh food we often think of āchopā aka fresh food diced up and served in a dish. Chop is great, but it is far from the only way to serve fresh food. The simplest trick that I use regularly is to wedge a full carrot or other veggie through the bars of the cage. Depending on the size of the bird they often use it as a perch, and we all know how eager they can be to destroy their perches! For larger birds that canāt really perch on the carrot I try to put the food right at beak level in front of their favorite perch or secure it to the perch itself. Using a vegetable as a perch is one of the most effective strategies that I have found for getting a bird to decide to try biting something.
Let them play with their food
When introducing new foods, I donāt necessarily want the bird to know that Iām trying to feed him new things, instead I prefer to pique his curiosity with a new toy that is secretly full of nutrition! The simplest form of this is just shoving a wedge through the top or side of the cage but you can also hang them from stainless steel kabobs or fill those little āhay ballsā with veggie chunks for them to pull out. If you have time and energy you can use a spiralizer etc. to turn things like zucchini into long stringy or curly noodles and weave them through the bars or drape them down from the top of the cage.
Get in their way
Once your bird knows where the food and water are you can try setting the fresh food on the dishes just to get in the way. This probably wonāt lead them to immediately chow down, but usually they will get annoyed and toss it out of the way or just eat around it. Either of these outcomes are positive steps toward actually eating the food.
Share
Sit down near them and munch on the same food you just offered them. Parrots are flock creatures and love to eat together with their flock mates.
Donāt share
Let them see that you are eating, that you enjoy your food, and then donāt offer to share it. Use possessive body language and enjoy that spinach! Let them come and check it out and TRY to get it. Pretend you wonāt let them have it. Have I mentioned how similar feeding humans is to feeding parrots? I have used this on kids as well while my husband looked at me like I was insane for pushing my childās hand away from a cucumber, but guess who loves cucumbers now?
Think of colors
Have you noticed that your bird has a favorite color? A least favorite? If you have noticed he is terrified of his red toy but loves his yellow perch, keep that in mind when choosing which color of pepper to buy this week.
Donāt forget your budget
With a parrot at home to feed the produce section at the grocery store can suddenly seem like a candy store! But remember that fresh food spoils and that the more times you cut something the faster it will go bad. A whole leaf of kale can be left in the cage all day, but kale shredded into a bunch of tiny pieces is likely to be a soft mushy mess that may even start to smell by the end of the day, and it is also more likely to draw bugs. Especially early on when you know your little one is not very likely to actually ingest much of what you offer, try not to burn yourself out with chopping, cleaning, and spending. Donāt be afraid to keep it simple while you wait for them to finally get interested enough to take a bite. Remember, if food isnāt fresh enough to look appetizing to you, it shouldnāt be in the bird cage, either.
Donāt stress the pellets
In my experience it is extremely difficult to move a bird straight from seeds to pellets, but relatively easy to add pellets to a fresh food diet for a parrot who loves to try new things. For this reason, I just wait until we have had at least some success with new foods before offering pellets. I generally start with the biggest size I can find because those seem more like toys, and then transition down to one size down from what the package recommends (so I would feed a cockatiel budgie size, etc). Remember that most commercial pellets are sold based on size not species and that they are not really complete nutrition no matter what the package says. Consider this; The bag has a picture of a lovebird from semi-desert Africa, a cockatiel from the grasslands of Australia, and a conure that lives in the rainforest canopy of South America. How could those three species possibly have all their nutritional needs met by one product when their natural diets have virtually nothing in common? Some companies have started producing species-specific pellets and I hope that trend continues but for now I focus heavily on fresh and live foods with pellets as a fun addition for variety and to fill in gaps.
BONUS
Once your feathered buddy is finally eating all the good stuff, what is the best way to make sure his diet is balanced? Do you need to buy 100 fresh ingredients and spend a whole weekend slicing, chopping, portioning, and freezing veggies so that you can freeze his meals into single portions? Well, you can if you want! I prefer not to freeze my chop because once thawed it turns sour MUCH faster than fresh food, and some parrots donāt like the texture once it has been thawed. Since one or a few birds donāt eat much each week, it can seem like a waste to buy as many things as we want our birds eating unless we ourselves want to eat all the extra veggies (which is a GREAT idea!). Instead of buying everything every week, I follow this simple formula and rotate my ingredients in and out as often as possible.
1 colorful vegetable (such as carrot)
1 green vegetable (such as zucchini)
1 hot pepper
1 dark leafy green
1 sprout
1 healthy and safe spice optional
1 fruit optional and species dependent (for example good luck getting your Cockatiel to eat fruit AT ALL, but your Eclectus can benefit from fruit more often than your African Grey)
Nuts or seeds in small quantities depending on species (for example Budgies eat lots of grass seeds in the wild and should keep some in their diet, while Macaws need the fat from nuts)
I then leave the pieces quite large to be picked up in a foot and eaten
Your birds might need prompt veterinarian care, and treatment. Birds can go down hill fast!
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www.thesprucepets.com
Bird Poop Chart: How to Monitor Your Bird's Droppings
Look for changes in the color, texture, odor, and size of your pet bird's dropping to keep an eye on your feathered friend's health.
