Vet visit and diet change

[kellycampy]

GiGis first vet visit was on Monday and it went well. The vet was very helpful and gave me a ton of info and handouts to look over. I had them take a culture and a swab just to make sure she’s healthy as well. So for diet right now we are trying “birdy bread“ and she seems to like it !! We want to get her off the crappy pet store diet and see that she can eat tons of yummy things that aren’t just millet !! The birdy bread is jiffy corn bread mixed with Harrison’s pellets, millet, corn, peas, and a little bit of the seed she’s used to. She also gets some crackers and some peanut butter crackers as well. Cage cleaned every day, perches wiped down with hot water every other day ( and I would actually like to replace her perches with comfy perches very soon)

Also she doesn’t appear to have her wings clipped which is good, I got really nervous about that in the beginning.. I thought she had been clipped uneven but she’s fine I was just worried for no reason. She’s also most likely a girl and we got her leg band off as well !! So now we focus on diet !!

 

[Feathery]

Thats great she got a clean bill of health! I'm in the process of converting diet for two of my birds as well. It's been slow, but we are getting there. I will have to look into birdie bread.

In regards to the perches, good call on replacing the dowel rod perches. The uniform shape is not good for them. Natural perches with various diameters are best. You can even find some safe types on branches in your area, clean and prepare them, and use those.

 

[sunnysmom]

It's been awhile since I had Jiffy Corn Bread but I would check the ingredients. Doesn't it have sugar and salt? Really not a good diet choice. You can make your own birdie bread using much better ingredients. If you do a search on here I know there are recipes posted. I would be careful about the crackers too. It's great that you're improving her diet but I would try healthier food. Cockatiels are granivores. So I believe they need seed in their diets. I actually feed about 40% seeds, 40% vegetables and 20% nutriberries. My tiels love freeze dried vegetables and also Higgins Worldly Cuisine mixes.

 

[rocky'smom]

First off I would skip the Jiffy Cornmeal mix way too high in sugar, salt, lard. There are alot of other much better ingredients out there for our birds.

“JIFFY” Corn Muffin Mix | "JIFFY" Mix

“JIFFY” Corn Muffin Mix bakes into a delicious muffin or sweet cornbread. Compliments your favorite barbecue or chili dish.

site.jiffymix.com

The couple of times I've made birdy bread with ground up oat meal, ground up kamut or ground up sorghum flour. You can buy the seeds and grind them up in blender.