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Sam, remind me please whether you're feeding them brown rice with flax oil stirred into it right before serving. That's excellent nutritionally while giving them the oils that are best for them -- and us! Wild cockatiels are ground feeders, so your birds might enjoy eating together off a "picnic table" rather than from separate bowls. Simply spread a paper towel on a flat surface that won't be stained by what soaks through the paper towel from the rice or their raw vegetables, and watch the tiels gather 'round.

Hard to understand a 10-gram weight loss overnight. Are you certain your scales aren't messing with you?

Oh good, I weighed woody this morning so that is a good time to weigh him! Last time I weighed him in the afternoon.

Darlene, I have to disagree with your thoughts on weekly weighing. After Ginger got a shot of prednisone, she dropped 13 grams in a matter of 3 days. Had I waited longer, no telling what might have happened, and neither I nor the vet thought about the polyuria associated with a steroid. As for time of weighing, I do weigh before they eat, as soon as I roll the cages out of the bedroom before putting their food out.

Paca, they will not eat rice period. I've tried brown, white, green purple, any color and variety there is, but they won't touch it. I've never used any flax seed oil for anything, and really don't know much about the organics foods. As for the scales, they are right on, checked by verified weights. I too was a little worried that she'd lose that much to poop, but when you look under where she was perched sleeping, you'd see why. Actually, all of them generally lose between 3-6 grams overnight, but pick it back up during the day, based on morning dry weight and evening "wet" weight just before sleep time.

Would you like some diet ideas? If so, just tell us what you feed them and we'll be happy to critique it to bits! I mean, give you comments

Their diet now consists of L&M Farms Vita-Vittles seed mix, Lafebers pellets, Kaytee parakeet size pellets, either kale or baby bok-choy, brocolli flowers and 100% whole wheat bread. They also get different snack foods daily either of millet sprays, plain popcorn, rice crackers, different Japanese foods, and essentially most everything we eat, minus the bad stuff. There are some foods they will not touch, except for Missy and Chibi. They will try most anything they see us eat, but the rest are pretty finicky, and will not eat a lot of other vegetables, although we offer each and every time. Carrots are out, as are most beans, and all forms of corn, except for corn based treats. For the most part, they eat pretty well, with not a lot of variety, but then again, my vet has indicated that being natural seed, nut and berry eaters mixed with a few bugs, they really need a more seed based diet than other stuff. Despite all the things I've read about pellet based diets, I do believe adding in fresh veggies and other forms of whole wheat are about as good as it can be for them. Ginger of course is the exception, where she needs more fat intake than the rest, and I try to give it to her, but until her digestion process is in better working order, easy to digest foods are the rule for her. We also try some type of animal based protein foods when we have them ourselves as well as fish. Oh yeah, they also get their share of Big Mac's and fries

Sam, I said "unless you have a sick bird, weekly weighins are sufficient". You had a sick bird, otherwise why the prednisone shot? Anytime one thinks there is a problem with a bird, the weight should be first thing checked.
Please refresh my memory as to Ginger's problem. Age? Is she the only one who is losing weight? Reason for prednisone shot?