When will he eat on his own!

[Mimsy01]

My little devil Zeki is still not eating on his own. They usually are completely weaned between 6-10 weeks. Zeki is now 16 weeks and will not eat anything but live bugs on his own. Thats maybe 2% of his diet. He's advanced on everything else, flew early already started talking and they don't normally do that for a long time. He knows long full sentences. He is a master thief of all things light enough to fly off with. Best is something that makes the humans chase him around and then he drop down into vases or pots. You can't leave anything, such as cabinets partially open or his in and stealing everything.

He's a poop machine, I've never cleaned as much as I do now. He especially likes to get my keyboard. I've been through 3 of them cause he shorts them out by pooping on it. I'm pretty sure it's on purpose. He's constantly stealing my poop rag and tossing it in my bed. Pretty sure that's on purpose too. The picture is him on top of monitor, thats being protected from poo by a towel..which is replaced twice a day....yes he poos that much.

he's not supposed to be a good climber, but he watches Foo super carefully and has been mastering climbing skills...no good will come of this I'm certain. He steals the bunny's hay out of her cage and strings it across the living room...cause that is funny..Mom should vacuum more than just once daily.

Then when he's done all that he comes and sits on my shoulder and sings to me..and it's quite beautiful. he loves the bunny and sits with her and sings really quietly to her so she doesn't spook and he never pecks her. (the rest of us may get his wrath, especially if we are removing him from some space we don't want him..like the keyboard) It kinda melts me seeing how gentle he is with her.

 

[Mimsy01]

photo bomb.

Zeki has all his big boy feathers in.

 

[Mallory]

What a handsome starling! When I raised my Koda, he was "weaned" and eating on his own long before he had all his adult feathers in. He is still more interested in food I am holding, and is a very picky thing who goes through food phases. What are you feeding him? My starling eats a blend with ground cat food and parrot pellets with some various other things (dried fly pupa, small seeds, bee pollen etc.) mixed in that I handmake for him. I also offer live insects (dubia roaches, crickets, waxworms, butterworms, phoenix worms, mealworms) and his favorite are mayflies when we can find them - the only wild insect I feed to my animals. A few days a week he gets fruit as well, usually berries and mango, papaya and banana. Koda naturally transitioned to self feeding because when he was old enough, we gradually increased the time in between hand feedings which made him motivated to look for food himself. He first played with and then ate live insects, when that happened we used a bowl of live insects to get him to self feed, then gradually replaced the contents with fruit and moist cat food, then with his dry food.
I give mine a box full of hay, paper shreds (the kind you can buy for small animal bedding) and some plastic toys and sprinkle some insects in as well. This occupies him for awhile, picking the bugs out and then grabbing all the toys and beating them against his perches. Starlings are not affectionate in the same way parrots are, but they are very playful and trusting when hand raised. Koda's favorite place in the world is the top of my head! It sounds like Zeki has a great life and a lot to keep him entertained. As a last note, we made the difficult decision to clip our starling's wings when he started evading us when it was back to cage time and we had to chase him until he was breathing hard. This we could have pretty easily retrained. Then he decided he wanted to instigate by getting on our amazon's cage - she is very aggressive with other birds - and we knew he was going to hurt himself if allowed flight any more. I thought clipped he would be handicapped but he can still make short upwards flights and he gets around very well. It has made our lives much easier and he focuses on spending time with us again instead of messing with the other birds. Just thought I'd mention it because most people are firmly opposed, many without even working with starlings! It looks like you've done a beautiful job raising Zeki and I hope hearing how we transitioned ours might give you some ideas!

 

[Mimsy01]

I'm thinking our main problem with switching to eating on his own, was when we first got him he was just bones, had a respiratory infection...we really didn't think he would make that first night. I think he may of fallen or jumped from his nest at too young an age and now has some food issues.

His main diet is 2 cups of dog food (wellness), 1/2 cup of layer mash, a tbl or so of applesauce and some egg mixed to a thick oatmealy consistancy. I also keep a small bowl in his cage of dry dog food/layer mix in case he eats on his own.

We do give him a few treats of mealworms and crickets, but bugs with those exoskeletons are not terribly good for starlings so we keep em to a minimum. We do feed him cat spiders, as the only wild caught bug and he loves those. I'm thinking of order flies, since it's hard to find store bought bugs that are actually healthy for them.

He loves sprouts and I make those regularly for him and Foo. he also gets a few fruits and veggies. I try to keep him out of seeds since they really don't do much for them, as well as grains.

I read an interesting study they did with starlings, since they sometimes will eat grain crops. It seems those types of foods give them a rush of energy to get things done, so to speak. However, it does nothing to put on weight and starlings on just grains and seed would starve rather quickly. They need over 60% of their diet to be animal/insect source foods to survive well.

he will sometimes steal a few of the parrot pellets and eat those.

The last few days he's been going longer between feedings and I caught him actually eating food on his own. He won't do it if he thinks I'm watching though. Sneaky bugger.

I wouldn't clip him. He's a complete pain, however there is no dangers really in the house. Our conure doesn't even get all that perturbed with him coming in her cage and she is usually gets defensive about her cage. She seems to accept him well. He also leaves if she is cranky. However, if she were a macaw I'd probably be a whole lot more worried. he's already a velcro bird as it is and is always in the same room with one of the human family members, although he will go check the dog, conure and bunny throughout the day if they are not in the same room. If we have to put him in the cage he usually will go when I ask him to. However if he's in one of those moods I just go into the bathroom, he'll follow and I shut the door and turn off the light...easy to pick him up in the dark. ;P

Another trick is..he can't help himself and must go under any blanket if I make a tent, which of course I can catch him then too. I think he's more forgiving than most starlings. We can hold him and do nails and such and really doesn't make a stink out of it, maybe some beak snapping, but thats it. When we let him go after holding he doesn't fly away he just yells at me with his feathers up, giving me the what for about it all.

The bunny has litter boxes t hrough out the house which have litter pellets (wood) and hay in them. Zeki doesn't care much about hay, but he has been taking the poo's out and making little piles on my kitchen counter. grrr

 

[Mallory]

Honestly, mealworms are not a great insect for reptiles or starlings but there are many insects on the market that are healthy for them. My favorite of the commercially available insects are roaches - I use Blaptica dubia. They have a smaller proportion of exoskeleton to "meat" than crickets, superworms or mealworms and are very easy to raise. Koda gets the very young roaches. He also adores waxworms (a rare fattening treat) and butterworms (an expensive treaf), he will also eat phoenix worms which are a much healthier option. I give maybe 10-25% of his daily diet via gut loaded insects. I do try to offer a big variety of insects to all of my insectivores while keeping nutritional quality of different species in mind. I do offer a lot of fruit, which seasonally will make up a large part of a wild starling's diet, but I only offer it on certain days not everyday. His dry mix is mainly high quality grain free cat food, then I use parrot pellets, insectivore/softbill pellets and a few other things in small amounts to keep him interested. Seeds are rare, and he usually does not touch them, but I do occasionally offer him shelled seeds or suet - which he is fond of. Obviously it is fattening, I give him maybe a pinch every month. We offer a few other treats, oftentimes we use things we have around for the other animals (Repashy reptile gels, greens, etc.) and let him play with them and decide if he wants to try them. His favorite treat is bacon, which he only gets when he manages to steal bits from a salad or potato. Of course most of what we offer him is used as a toy instead of eaten, but at least he enjoys himself!

 

[Mimsy01]

I'll probably order some insects at some point. They will only be for him, no one else in our house wants bugs.

I give suet to the wild birds. His fave food to steel is melons. He actually eats those. Most things he just steals and drops somewhere. Saying no to a starling is like a dare.

Sun drunk pic of him.

 

[RavensGryf]

This is interesting, I'm learning more about Starlings just from reading this thread.

I love hearing about Zeki's antics and wow what a nice new look he has! Love the pics. He's a funny little guy. So cute how he befriended the bunny and is so gentle with her.

 

[Mimsy01]

Well I spoke too soon about the bunny. He's been jealous of it as of late and will pull hair out if I pet her in front of him. Luckily the bun is mellow and is putting up with his nonsense.

I think him and Foo are conspiring. They have been going into each others cages at night and going to sleep. We have to keep removing the intruder and putting them in their own cage at night. I'd let them stay, but I don't trust either of them to be alone in a cage together without supervision.

My husband keeps making Beeker, from the muppets sounds for him, so all day today he's been flying around saying "memememe meme"

 

[Mimsy01]

I was cleaning my keyboard with a small bowl of vinegar to get all the zeki poo off it. (I think he purposely aims for it)

He was grabbing up the pure vinegar and wiping it all through his feathers. He got so into it that he was falling over trying to get it in hard to reach places. He did this for a good 15 or more minutes.

Such weird and interesting behavior.

I found this article interesting on it. Seems that wild starlings were using mothballs to do this too. I'm sure it's related to "anting", but it doesn't seem that scientists have a clear reason why some birds do this. Some reasons they have considered are: making ants more edible (though that would not explain non food related items), the acid repelling parasites, helping in the molting process, relieving some of the discomfort of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-anointing_in_animals

 

[RavensGryf]

Wow, that's interesting! Did he get a clean water bath after?

 

[Mimsy01]

Now that you ask, i didn't give it much thought cause he baths often, he did go into his bowl I leave in the sink for him right after and took a bath.

Apparently a lot of starlings in homes use things other than ants-I've read Wine, Soda, sauerkraut and pickles so far. I'd imagine it's the acid they are looking for.