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Hi there

I haven't been on this board in ages. Sorry. Should have kept in touch. My 6 year old cockatiel, Pesto, has a broken beak. It's a long story involving him getting out, being missing for 2 days and then I found him BACK!, but with his beak badly broken. I have taken him to 3 vets. The last one (yesterday) is known as "the best". And he was amazing. Unfortunately he had to amputate the front end of Pesto's top beak. The vet says that if Pesto starts eating soft food, he can live another 30 odd years. I would love that. The only problem is that Pesto refuses to eat anything that is soft or wet. Can anyone help me with tricks or ways that i can get him to take the food. I managed to give him 1ml of hand-rearing formula this morning. It is very difficult, as he does not like anything new and a cyringe is not high on his likable list. Any advice will be really appreciated.

Oh my goodness poor baby I found that my tiels don't like wet food either but did eat mashed up egg.
Perhaps try some hardboiled egg mashed up with some seed and pellets, wet the mix with a little warm water.
Hopefully someone with more experience will reply very soon!
Good luck in the meantime, hope he'll pull through and gets used to the wet(ter) food

Poor Pesto thats so sad. I am not one with alot of experience but when Rosie wasn't eating pellets (I give her Roudybush) I started boiling water and pouring it on the pellets and let them sit for 15-20 minutes to absorbe the water but not be extra watery & mushy and then I fulff them with the fork and she loves them that way. You might want to try that. Good luck!!!

Scrambled eggs, pasta mixed with a suppliment, sprouts, soaked seeds, might even try some of those frozen wafels you get in the store and pop them into a toaster (serve warm with some peanut butter spread over it and cut it up.) Of course keep trying the syringe feeding but remember to increase the intake every time and sooner or later you will be able to get more cc's into your bird. They have to remember how to open their crop to accept this type of feeding and as a adult bird they may need some time to adjust but they will when they start to get depleated in nutrition.

Good luck and may God Bless
Dutch

I got so worried, cause he hasn't eaten in 7 days and started shivering today. So, I phoned the vet and they said I should bring him in for tube feeding. Well, they've just phoned me now to say that another part of his beak came off, so now he has hardly any top beak left. They did tube him however and it went down well. They also gave him some more fluids through a drip. He will stay there until tomorrow afternoon. Then I can go and fetch him. Hopefully the tube feeding will stimulate his feeding response again, cause I think he almost forgot that he has to eat. He doesn't pay the food any attention and if he was hungry he would at least look at it! Tried the egg thing. Pesto loves muched-up boiled egg. Usually, when I start cracking the egg shells he goes balistic. Yesterday, he didn't even look up. He didn't even look at the egg. That really worries me. I will keep you up to date as to what happens.

Oh NO.. Rosie & I will say a prayer for Pesto.. Good luck.. Keep up updated.

Oh the poor bird...I am surprised the vet didn't make an artifical beak for him( like a dental veneer). He might not have been eating because the rest of the beak was fractured.
Oatmeal works for my birds (especially if I am eating it) harrison's mash (its a powdered form of the harrison's pellet)...