Not eating pellets

[AW2023]

The past week Tatu has been barely eating her pellets.
If I give her seedballs or plain noodles (the latter I've done twice this past week, when her droppings got concerningly small), she will pounce on them with ravenous hunger.
But she barely touches the natural Zupreem pellets she's been eating all her life.
She's never been a bird to ignore pellets in hope of seed. She loves her pellets; or at least she did. I don't know if they're making her nauseous now?
In terms of fresh veggies, she's only been interested in carrots these days, and even those are hit/miss with her.

She's still preening, flying, running, singing. Happy.
She's on .06ml of allopurinol and .01ml of gabapentin. She has a kidney tumor and accelerating kidney disease from said tumor. In her last bloodwork from 2/6, her uric acid was back in range, but her triglycerides, cholesterol, sgot, and glucose were high, presumably from increasing the seed in her diet (in order to lower the amount of protein ingested from pellets.)

My vet is out of the office until Tuesday. I can keep her fed with seedballs, but obviously a 95% seed diet isn't great, even for a terminal bird. She isn't ready to go yet.
I know anorexia is a symptom of kidney disease, but I'm still really panicked about this change in appetite.

Any advice? Tips?
I don't really even know what I'm asking, to be honest. I'm just scared for her.

 

[Deleted member 57370]

If they refuse a food they have had before, I now listen ..it's possible this bag is contaminated? Was this a new bag she started refusing?

 

[Mizzely]

How old is the food? Ripley is really picky and I have to buy small bags or he won't eat them before they go "stale".

But it very well could just be not agreeing with her with the medication.

 

[AW2023]

I think the bag should be fine? But I do have a fuzzy memory of getting a bag of food that I wasn't particularly happy with, and I can't remember if I threw it out or kept it.
I ordered a new bag that will be here tomorrow just in case.

I also made a vet appointment for Tuesday (earliest my vet could do.)

 

[AW2023]

If they refuse a food they have had before, I now listen ..it's possible this bag is contaminated? Was this a new bag she started refusing?

How old is the food? Ripley is really picky and I have to buy small bags or he won't eat them before they go "stale".

But it very well could just be not agreeing with her with the medication.

Started using new bag of food. Problem is persisting. I can get her to eat pellets if I dump them in her water bowl and stand there nonstop coaxing her to eat them. But otherwise she basically ignores them and goes to sleep.

 

[Mizzely]

Started using new bag of food. Problem is persisting. I can get her to eat pellets if I dump them in her water bowl and stand there nonstop coaxing her to eat them. But otherwise she basically ignores them and goes to sleep.

Hopefully the vet can give more insight I would give her what she will eat for now if it's safe to do so!

 

[GreenThing]

I'm so sorry about Tatu-- I suspect it might be hard to pinpoint, but hope the vet can help. Percy kept up his appetite until the day he died (maybe the moment, knowing him-- I like to think he got some pleasure from unlimited access to the forbidden millet at the end!) with full-blown kidney failure, but he started throwing up clear liquid when his uric acid levels were high-- subcutaneous fluids did stop this and make him more comfortable. It's good that she still has an appetite for something.

 

[AW2023]

I was so scared she was going to need to be euthanized on Tuesday. But the vet said there's still time, and still options.

On Tuesday I took Tatu in, and we took bloodwork which came back today. All of her previously super high levels are still high, but a good 100 points lower than before which is great (with the exception of her CPK, which jumped up.) Her uric acid dropped to 4.4 (!) which is nearly as low as it used to be pre: kidney tumor. She'd somehow only lost 1 gram. We upped her pain meds a bit.
Tatu still won't eat her pellets, but the vet gave permission for Tatu to simply eat whatever she wants going forward. Eating something is more important than eating healthy, given fatty liver disease and other conditions that can come from bad diets are not of great concern to an already terminal parrot.
For my other birds, the refusal to eat pellets might have been a manipulation tactic to get seeds, but for Tatu, it was a house sized red flag. Her droppings had become 100% liquid, and she had basically stopped moving. But she's doing SO much better than a week ago.

I've stopped trying to bully Tatu into eating pellets, and instead just leave them in an additional bowl in her cage. I think my attempts to coax her into eating them were stressing her out and making it worse, and since then she's been eating more food again in general (though still less than normal.)
Her main food bowl is just going to be seeds and dried peppers going forward. In addition, she's been (again with vet permission) eating lots of plain noodles and bread, in addition to some veggies. The noodles have been insanely helpful in keeping her from falling back into the 'not eating -> gets weak -> can't eat -> gets weaker' spiral she was in the past week and a half.
She's going to the bathroom semi-regularly again, and the droppings once again have a fecal component.
Things are stable.

@GreenThing , would you mind telling me more about Percy's kidney disease journey? Obviously all birds are different, but I would very much like to know your bird's experience. I am also so sorry for your loss.
My vet is phenomenal, but the one thing she and I disagree on is that she won't offer subcutaneous fluids for birds. She says the risk is just too high for small birds.