Putting very chubby Tiel in a diet?

[icebear]

I acuired three new cockatiels in the last 24 hours... two from the neighbor's who found out they are allergic and one from the pet store by trading in some stuff.

The girl from the pet store (Heretofore known as "Tessie") is very chubby... i mean very, very chubby. She had been there for some time, its been months since i have worked there and i am familiar with her. She has been by herself in the cage for at least two months, and i think she overate out of boredom frankly, because otherwise the bird appears very healthy... She got fed daily with a commercial pellet/seed mix and about once a week or more all the birds get veggies, and egg biscuit, nutriberries etc. SHe had toys to play with....

How do you get a bird to lose weight safely? I am sure its not easy cause a bird losing weight is not usually a good sign.... but i'm sure it won't be good for her to be that chunky....


any suggestions?

[Shirley]

Millet is fattening... is she flighted? Give her some exercise as often each day as you can... 15 minutes at a time... cut down on the egg biscuits and carbs... what does she weigh (grams)?

[icebear]

She gets out of breath just fluttering and climbing the bars....

i have only had her for about 8 hours....

i clipped her wings cause she would try to take off and then land with such a hard thud i didn't want her to be able to jump, she knows she can't fly now either that or with her feathers clipped she can't acheive lift-off at all. She isn't petrefied of towels, so if i have to take her out i just lay one on her and she chews on it (instead of trying to nail me), but dosen't scream, and then i set her down and she continues to pick and chew the towel and seems rather happy like that.
I'll try to get her on pellets and maybe give her thawed green beans and see if she will take sprouts, low calorie & good nutrient stuff...
can barely feel her keel

[icebear]

150g

[harleybaby]

Yeah she's a big girl! I think the sprouts and fresh foods are great! Sprouts are about the best food you could ever feed your birds. I wouldn't feed just pellets though, tiels really need to seeds in their diet and a lot of tiels have problems on an all pellet diet. Maybe portioned out?


Like Shirley mentioned the exercise and activity would probably help the most. It can make a huge difference in their weight. Good luck and I think it's great that you gave them a loving home!!! Leah

[Shirley]

150g

Holy Mackerel!!! Yep, she's a bigg'en! Tucker is large at 80g.

I would seek the advice of an avian vet, in this case.

[icebear]

i must have good size Tiels, Happy is not quite a year old and she's 90g, but only seems a bit chunky

i'll see about calling an avi vet, i think the big thing i need to know is what rate of weight loss is safe and what foods are best (for that).
maybe if i just feed her like i do my other birds-- omitting the 'treats'... her cage has one of those tops that open and expand into a play ramp, i could try allowing her to be at liberty as often as i can keep an eye on her, maybe climbing around at her own pace will be a big help.
My other tiels are all kept in tower type cages, so they have a lot of space to climb up and down and get out to play a lot...that might be all she really needs and it will get her more trusting of us... she isn't scared of us, she would rather not be messed with basically.
I'll try and get a pic of the little tubby...she is a beautiful pied.

[Shirley]

In this case, if it were me, I'd be calling my avian vet and asking those questions... rate of weight loss, what to feed for best rate of healthy weight loss, and get a basic physical... what caused such a gain, and so on.

[icebear]

Yes, thats what i meant... :) i tend to 'talk' through my thoughts to organise them, it might sometimes sound like i am ignoring advise or passively arguing... but its just me going through the thought process and getting mental inventory of the situation, and it helps having others kinda proof-read my thoughts. I know that it sometimes reads differently when i post, so i hope i'm not sounding like i'm just fluffing the advice about a vet and continuing to ask questions that have been answed.

Just clarifying, before i accidentally frustrate someone ;)

[Shirley]

:funny: I do that myself! Nothing wrong with that... outloud mental discussion, bring in others' ideas...

[harleybaby]

I do the same thing. If you read my posts I know they are very unorganized but I type as I think LOL

I'm glad to see that she will be going to the vet. Let us know what the the vet says. :D

[birdnerd]

O.o Yep. Big tiel if average is 80g...

You just got her, but is she an older bird?

Lockheed looks a little large. I don't own a gram scale to check her out, but either she stays pretty fluffy or she's a bit chubby. I chalk it up to metabolic shift like mammals do. Lockheed's 20 or more.

Another consideration: girlie birds will generally outmass boy birds ... not by nearly double as in your case, though ...

Get her to do "bird aerobics". While she's sitting on your hand, drop your hand a short distance very suddenly. She should grab your finger and flap a bit.

[Jean]

Here is a list of cockatiel weights, from newly hatched to adult bird.

http://www.cockatiel.org/tips/weights.html

[birdnerd]

Nifty!

[icebear]

She's doing good.... lots of exercise and good food as prescribed. She's also a particularly big bird, so that bit of extra weight really tipped the scales. She is looking more correctly porportioned now :)

[Shirley]

Good to hear!! What's her weight, if we dare ask "her" her weight! :rofl:

[birdnerd]

Well, spiffy! I'm glad she's slimming down a bit.

(:

[icebear]

She's at 128g now

i figured out her favorite perch and i put her feed bowl as far away as possible, so she has to climb for it and then back to lounge on her perch....

she looks much more porportional (is that a word?) now, i think she is a big cockatiel on her own, i guess some show-bred birds are well into the 120+grams, so maybe she came from some show bloodlines somehow?

But she is SOOOOO cranky. Hates me with a passion it seems. :( I'm going to need help convincing her that i'm not a bad person :)

[birdnerd]

That is a bit of a trick sometimes. Is she just as cranky away from the cage?

[icebear]

oh, yes.

she's not at all trustful of us.

she looks closely with interest when her food bowl is being filled, but will try to get away from hands if they get too close.

when i take her from the cage for weighing i have to use a small towel, and she chews, plucks and bites the towel the whole time even when she is not being restrained. she dosen't try to escape the towel, but she attacks it like she's glued down. If she happens to catch a finger she bites down hard and 'chews' and will continue to chew and break skin if i can't pry her beak off. I have been bitten by bigger birds than her, so i don't panic when bit, i just put my other hand over her eyes and open her beak as gently as i can for the situation.... but man alive, she has powerful jaws for a little one. Ouch! :D

[Shirley]

You may have already mention this, but is she getting ANY sunflower seeds? If so, withhold ALL sunflower seeds... they are very fattening. I was speaking with a 'tiel breeder last week and mentioned your 'tiel to her... and the weight, and she was immediately concerned and brought up the sunflower seeds... NO sunflower seed at all, she said. And to get her close to 90g. Her 'tiels are around 80-85g, adult breeders.

Congrats on your progress, it WILL and SHOULD take time.

She feeds natural pellets (not the colored ones) and a recommends a seed mix that is LOW in nuts/peanuts/safflower, and then lots of fresh chopped veggies, and of course, sprouts are fine and recommended. Not sunflower sprouts, but then my sprout mixes don't have sunflowers in them. We feed Higgins fruit and veggie seed mix.

Also, w/o reading through the thread again... cage size... mine and hers are in flights such that flighted or not, they have to climb or fly a lot to get to their various feeding stations. I put all the veggies/sprouts in long low food trays on the floor of my cages, btw.

hth,
Shirley :)

[birdnerd]

Icebear: Wow. Bummer she's such a grouch. With some patience and persistence, that ought to change, though.

Freebie's territorialness is only active when there's a female bird in range. Lockheed makes enough ruckus you're sure she'll take your head off, but never does anything truly dangerous. (Hasn't figured out that closing the beak is necessary when trying to bite hard enough to do damage.)

[icebear]

No SFS in her mix, we mainly feed Pretty Bird pellets, which are colored, i havn't found a local supplier of non-colored pelleted food in bulk yet. i might ask my old boss if he can order me some other brand that does not color their cockatiel diet. But it really depends on their supply company. But he's been able to get me other special order stuff.

I keep the Tiels in what i call Tower Cages, since they all have clipped wings and are taken out to play as often as i can, i don't consider the lack of horizontal room to be too much of a problem, and they have almost 4 feet of vertical to climb up and down. I have my breeding pair in a 5.5' x 3' mini-aiv my hubby built, and i am going to see if i can talk him into building a few more eventually.


Lockheed.... i love that name, Tessie almost ended up as a Lockheed too cause she was so Airliner sized it was the first name that popped into my mind, but i couldn't do it cause i knew the name was being used... so she ended up being a "tesseract" Tessie...:D

I need to post a pic of her, she's just the darned prettiest thing to me. Her crest is different than the others tho... its almost dunce cap-like. Instead of being a wispy tall crest, its almost like a red cardinal's.

[birdnerd]

:D She's filled out into a 4th dimension, eh? :D

Lockheed got her name not because of her size, but because of her flight capacity. She was an excellent flier for many moons. She's up in age now, though, and has lost some of that.

[Shirley]

What are they eating besides pellets?

I'd love to see her crest! I saw a pic a yr or so ago of a 'tiel with a crest like a crown or like what you might be describing... really pretty and unusual!

[icebear]

Veggies, from frozen, and some seed mix with the SFS picked out, also sprouts and sprouted wheatgrass.... today they will get fresh zuchini from the garden,

i tried to get a good pic of her crest, but the camera flash managed to make it look thinner than it really is....plus, when she's ticked off (when is she not? lol) she spreads it out much more.... when she's at rest and it is up its just short and very dense at the base....noticably moreso than all the others. It might not be as noticable on its own, if i could get a good shot of her next to the other birds it would show up better.

[birdnerd]

Wow... she is a little larger than the average squawkatiel. Makes Freebie look ... petite.

Cute little critter, though.

I can't get mine to try non-pellet or non-seed things. I've tried all the tricks I can think of more than once. No joy.

[icebear]

i have been lucky, all my birds have easily accepted pelleted diets.... even my finches figured it out quickly.
The babies i have hand raised were started early, but the ones that we got as grown-up birds had the benefit of being able to actually watch all the others eating their pellets, fruits, veggies, sprouts etc. So they were able to recognise that the pellets were indeed food, not some weird human confetti. :)

[birdnerd]

Freebie and Lockheed took to pellets after seeing Spot chow down on them. No joy on the fruit/veggie thing, though.