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Some time back, I posted notes about frequent weighing of your birdies. I think I forgot to mention that I also weighed the amount of food they were consuming, just to compare with what I'd read about theoretical food consumption. If you have gram scales, weigh your food dish / bowl /container, then add some food, and re-weigh. At the end of the day, again weigh the container and food remnants to see actually how many grams of food they are consuming. In my case with 6 birdies, I have two dishes with seed mix, two with pellets, and two with other foods / vegetables. I was primarily concerned with seed and pellet intake, and guesstimated the others.

What I discovered over a period of about 2 weeks was that the average consumption of seeds and pellets was approximately 8 grams per bird, or about 48 grams total. That corresponds quite well with the recommended feedings of a moderately active cockatiel of 10% of their body weight, which in my case, most of my birds averaged in the low to mid 80 gram range. Any serious deviations from that would indicate either a potential overweight birdie, or a birdie that is less than optimally active. As has been stated by my favorite avian vet and others, a normally active bird will only consume as much food as is necessary to sustain their current weight and activity level. I have also observed that birds who fly more and are more active will eat more, drink more, and gain weight due to muscle mass, and not fat.

As I'm still on a learning curve with cockatiels myself, even after 2+ years, I encourage others to test their knowledge by experimentation and by reading about cockatiel behavior. I hope this little blurb might prompt some of you to actually determine how much your companion is eating so as to establish a baseline for future comparison, should something happen and your companion suddenly start to lose weight. Tomorrow is not too late to start!

cheers!

I know what you mean about weight of birds and trying to figure out if they are overwieght, underwieght, or just right. I was on this board and another quite a while back... and people were always talking about their bird's weight... Bubba seemed HUGE. Good example, Sam, you said your birds were around 80+ grams.... Bubba is at 100... I was concerned that he weighed so much more than other birdies. Before switching him to pellets, he was at 95, and the vet said that weight was just fine... but he had gained more weight! The vet showed me how to tell if birds were overweight or underweight by feeling their breastbone as well as visually inspecting for yellow fat beneith the skin... and Bubba seemed okay, but I was still confused about the weight differences.... the flying made complete sense.... so many people cut their birds wings, and they don't have the muscle development that Bubba has. The clowds parted, the heavens shined down, and all made perfectly good sense LOL.

-Jackie

Wow, I thought I had the only Tiels in the 100 gram range!!

Tweety, due to an accident with his cage bars and a wing, can no longer fly, but he is in the low 90's. Unix, my female, averages 98 grams, with an egg add about 4 grams. Ash, my rescue, eats like a pig. I think this was from him not getting food years ago at the former owner's place. He is usually 100 grams and will fly clipped or not!

In comparison, the only bird my vet worries about is my IRN. She is usually around 120 grams which is a little light. No matter what I feed her, she just doesn't gain weight. She has pellets, Lafeber products, lots of fresh foods and free access to dried fruit, although the fruit is in her puzzle dishes and she has to work to get to it.

Oh no!! what happened to Tweety and his bars! Please let us know in case we can learn anything from it.

No problem. About two years ago, when Tweety was 17 he had a really bad night fright.

The cage he was in has very narrow bar spacing 1/2 inch. In fact, I have Gouldian finches in there right now. He managed to get his entire fully feathered wing through the bars all the way to his shoulder.

I had to hold his wing in one hand and rotate his body in the other hand to get him out of the bars.

In his panic before I could get out of bed and to him he managed to pull his wing completely out of socket. On the x-ray it looked like the width of my thumb....

He spent a day at the vet and she determined that there really wasn't anything she could do to keep it in place. Since he wasn't in pain and was accually very happy concitering the x-rays and strange enviornment, that he would be fine, if not flightless. If it ever starts to really bother him, then she reccomended that it be amputated.

He has worked for the last two years to fly, nobody is going to tell him what to do! His wing still sits really low and if he tries to fly too much you can tell it hurts some. He can now glide across the room instead of falling like a rock. He cannot gain altitude, but with ladders he is very happy, as long as I don't dress him up as Santa! BTW He is the bird in my avitar.

You can see more photos here of my flock. Not all the birds are currently here, may some rest in peace. The first bird is Tweety's only offspring. She is currently with an elderly couple that love her dearly.

Actually, when I was doing the food consumption weights, Gizmo and Ginger were over 100 grams each, but the their weights have come down. Gizmo holds about 92 grams, Ginger dropped from 110 grams down to 84, Missy went from 84 up to 98 with a high of 106 (eggs) and Chibi, who cannot fly has held at 87 grams just about the whole time I've had him. He does not fly (yet) but suspect he might top out over 100 when he does eventually fly. Pixie is an exception. She has never weighed over about 80 grams and hold there pretty much. Smokey went from a paltry 78 grams to 90. Major improvement for him, and the activity of flying is what did it. At any rate, 10% of their body weight seems to be pretty close to what they will consume, based on averages of the 6.