Baby African Grey - What to feed?

[christine]

Hello, I should be picking up my new baby next week if the breeder releases him. I was wondering what to start feeding him? I have pellets and hopefully that will work. None of my other birds will touch them. I will also be going home with baby formula even though he will be weaned. I thought it would be a good bond if I continued with one feeding every evening. Does anyone feed their Greys baby food like squash, sweet potatoes or I could cook them fresh? What type of veges exactly? Raw? I can't wait. His little palace is all set up and waiting for him :DThere have been two delays, the breeder felt he wasn't ready yet but that's okay.

I'm concerned my little green cheeck will be extremely jealous he is such a baby. 17 weeks now. Always doing the bopping up and down thing when he sees me. Means he wants to be let out of his cage. What would be the kindest way to the green cheeck to introduce the baby Grey?

Thanks for all your past help. Working on posting pics, I joined photo bucket which someone suggested.

Have a great day everyone! ;)Montana

[avinet]

I think it is important with a Grey to give it the identical food as the breeder was giving it when it comes home. Exactly the same! Greys are by nature cautious, and if it arrives in a strange house and immediately gets strange food it may well stress badly and not eat the new food.

So be sure to get details of the breeder's food, and have that ready for the baby to come home. After it has settled in OK with you and is eating well, is relaxed in your company etc then you can begin to switch it onto the sort of diet you want to give.

As for fresh food, my Greys get a mix of raw veggies and fruit. The usual ones are a leafy green - chosen from either kale, endive, chicory, Chinese greens such as Bok Choy, Silver beet (Swiss chard to Americans), and then Capsicum - usually red, corn kernals, grated carrot, round beans, zuchinni, broccoli, apple (Grannny Smith variety) passionfruit, sometimes mandarin or grapes, and as a treat either almonds (in the shell or as kernels) and cashews. The fruit and veggies I chop up into bite sized pieces, and as a additional food I will also give sprouted seed at times. They also get a bit of multigrain bread daily - most of which ends up in the water!

That fresh mix is given almost daily - I might miss an occasional day if I haven't got to the veggie shop and out garden crop is not producing. It is normally provided as part of a pellet based diet, although at the moment they are back on seed for a while as an experiment.

I rarely give squash or sweet potato - and if I do it would always be cooked, the only veggie I would cook. Basically they would only get them if we had some left over from our own meal.

Introducing the Green-cheek and the Grey is a tricky one - do it on neutral ground well away from the cages, and work on the assumption initially at least, that the Grey will likely chase the Green-cheek away. But is very hard to predict what will happen - if the Grey was reared around other types of birds it may react differently than if it was raised in isolation - just use commonsense and watch carefully.

I would avoid giving the Grey any hand rearing food unless it is absolutely necessary - such as because it is refusing to eat at all and isn't settling in at all well. By going back to hand feeding there is a real risk of it regressing and that can lead to all sorts of issues - avoid hand feeding except as a last resort.

cheers,

Mike

[twr]

Mike, where do you get your kale? I can't find it. Do you grow it?

Congratulations on bringing your New baby grey home soon. A Grey is my dream bird, without any doubt.

I have, for about the past 6 months, starting feeding a mix of mostly raw veggies following the steps in this.

parrotnation.com/2010/08/08/chop-shot-by-shot/

It's called "chop" and it makes feeding your birds their veggies quite easy. I like that I can make it in bulk. I had success with it, whereas if I just present fresh bite size chopped veggies they were not eaten (although that works well for many others).

[christine]

Hello Mike and Robyn, Thanks for all the info. Especially about the hand feeding. I know a couple of people who hand fed their new greys once a day for a year and thought it was a good thing. I never thought it could become a negative. I certainly won't be doing it unless he is not eating at all. I didn't know silver beet was swiss chard - thanks!

I will be watching the green cheek closely with the grey. I am already watching him with the Nanday! He has been in the Nanday's cage several times but I take him right out. I think the Nanday tolerates him as you would a baby who doesn't know any better but that probably wouldn't be the case with the grey.

An added note - I saw an ad on the internet for greys for sale at a really low price - vet certificate, dna, shipped to your door, 3-4 mos old? I thought of the old adage " if its too good to be true it isn't" so staying with my breeder.

Thanks again. I find this forum very valuable. Regards Montana

[avinet]

I can often buy kale at our local fruit and veggie store - and sometimes Woolworths has it. I can often find it at some of the local weekend markets as well. We have also grown it but our climate here in SE Qld isn't ideal in summer. However it tends to do OK in the cooler months, but keeping it from getting eaten by grasshoppers and caterpillars is a problem when you don't want to use chemicals on it.

I don't try to freeze my fresh foods, but I do make a batch of veggies to last 3 days at a time. The fruit is chopped up daily.

I meant to include celery in my ;list of veggie sin the previous post - especially the leaves. Whenever we buy celery we always pick the bunch with the greatest amount of leaves!

Also I have a photo of our typical veggie mix included in an article at scas.org.au/html/pet_parrot_care.html This article is based on a handout I wrote that we would give every purchaser of a pet parrot when we had our shop.

cheers,

Mike

[christine]

Hello Mike, I just read your article for new parrot owners. Very informative and clearly written. Thanks. Montana

[twr]

Thanks Mike. So far I haven't found Kale, but I will keep looking now that I learn from you it's possible to find.

At first I thought it strange to freeze fresh chopped veggies too and it made me hesitate for a while before trying it. But this lady that created the "chop" concept seemed to know her stuff and so I tried it. Plus i am a member of another forum (hope its ok to say that) and many there I consider friends and I trust their opinions, well they were already making, freezing & feeding their chop and were really happy with it.

I used partitnation's method of freezing too (zip lock bags rolled to expel all air). Each bag contains a days serve. There is no freezer burn, no frosting up and it thaws to look exactly the same texture as it did fresh. I highly recommend giving it a try. It seems a lot of work in the day you make and pack it all up, but then you're off the hook for 2 -3 months.

If you have a bird that happily eats roughly chopped veggies, I can see the reason for serving them that way as well, but Tinga just doesn't recognise that as food. Another benefit is that when veggies are pureed, things sort of stick together. When they are breaking around to get something out of the chop they really enjoy the taste of, they almost can't help to get some of the other good stuff that's stuck to it as well.