I sprinkle it in their food and also offer the calcium by itself.
The organic grass-fed yogurt I use is maple hills.
I'll put a drop of apple cidar vinegar in their water. (Monitor water intake as some will not drink the water if you put too much)
How is Orin doing? Any improvements?
I was waiting on my wife to make eggs again. Anyways, she did, although I had to pull the egg shells out of the top of the trash can because she forgot to save them for me. I washed the egg shells under faucet water, then dried them on a paper towel; when dried, I ground them up in a coffee grinder. Then I used a single cup, porcelain coffee cup with a porcelain filter holder that goes on top, and I poured all of the fine egg shell powder inside of a coffee filter, then poured about 1/2 a cup of isopropyl rubbing alcohol into the filter and mixed up the powder and alcohol, then let the alcohol drain through the filter into the coffee cup. Once drained, I discarded the rubbing alcohol, then dumped the wet egg shell powder onto the top of a folded up paper towel until the powder completely dried. I was able to fill up a standard-sized, empty RX medication bottle about 1/3 to 1/2 way full of powdered egg shell powder from just 5 egg shells.
So, with sterilized egg shell powder madeā¦. I moistened a little bit of Harrisonās nuggets tonight (using a different method tonight and from now on) and added a little egg shell powder to the nuggets. Just enough to change the outer color of the nuggets initially to a whitish color. Once dried, the nuggets returned to the same color.
Until today, I have used an amber dropper bottle to mix the Unruffled Feathers brand of dry calcium + magnesium + vitamin D supplement powder with water, and to store the liquid for use. Sometime in this last year, my wife began noticing that this amber dropper bottle had āfloatersā in it which she assumed was from the supplement and water. I saw that the floaters were black and that the only other thing the same color is the suction cup of the eye dropper. So I started dumping out the liquid in the amber bottle and cleaning it, then make new batches of mixture every couple weeks, then every week. It sucked, because we used up a lot more supplement powder. But it was ultimately better for our Orrinās health not to have floaters in the same water as her supplement mixture. Now, instead of an eye dropper and an amber bottle, I have a small, clear spray bottle that atomizes water into the tiniest size of droplets.
Tonight, I added 2 scoops of dry calcium supplement powder to that new spray bottle, which is probably about a 3oz size bottle (taller yet narrower than the old 1oz bottle), and I only filled that new bottle with roughly 0.25oz of mixed water and dry calcium supplement powder, because clearly my conure wasnāt getting enough calcium with a larger, pre-use ratio of 1 scoop of dry supplement powder to .5oz or .75oz of water.
As to whether any of the aforementioned changes actually helps, itās too soon to say: I donāt know yet. I can say that she does eat her Harrison nuggets after the nuggets are moistened and then sprinkled with egg shell powder. The egg shell powder doesnāt have a bitter smell to it either, unlike the dissolved calcium supplement powder.
I think when my avian probiotics arrive, Iāll still moisten the Harrison nuggets with dissolved calcium supplement powder even though Iām sprinkling in powdered egg shells, because the Unruffled brand of supplement powder also contains magnesium and vitamin D, and her lab work showed low levels of vitamin D and calcium. But rather than dissolving the dry probiotic powder into water and using that water to moisten her Harrison nuggets, Iāll add the dry probiotic powder into the moistened Harrison nuggets along with the egg shell powder. At the same time I ordered the dry avian probiotics, I also ordered liquid avian vitamins and minerals, and (unless Iām not remembering correctly, which is quite possible) I ordered a separate liquid form of calcium too, because Iāll soon run out of the Unruffled Feathers brand of calcium supplement. Iāll just have to figure out how many liquid drops to add to the water in which I dissolved the dry supplement powder containing calcium, magnesium and vitamin D. While my conure wasnāt previously getting enough calcium, as evidenced by her continued seizuresāeven though one member here disagrees about seizure causationāI donāt want to give her an overdose of calcium either. If her seizures stop, then Iāll have lab work performed again. If, after lab work is performed and after her seizures hopefully stop, the calcium levels are higher than needed, Iāll know to decrease her calcium levels somewhat. Until then, Iām going to overshoot rather than under shoot her calcium intake.
Thanks for all of the advise. As money permits, Iāll still buy freeze dried kale and broccoli and use my same sinister methods of tricking her. She will eat particlized green veggies if she wonāt eat them whole!
