..........

[birbmcbirb]

...

[Pajarita]

Hi, Birb, welcome to the forum and I am so sorry your little bird is hurting! Now, you say that you examined her carefully but did you look at the soles of her feet? I don't know if you have dowels, cement or sand perches or natural tree branches in her cage but the ONLY perches that work for their feet are natural tree branches. Concrete or sand perches and dowels give them bumble foot after using them for a long time (and she is 21 so...). Put her upside down in your left hand and opening her toes (they always curl them up as in a loose fist when you turn them upside down) with your right hand, look carefully at the bottom of her feet. Does the skin look thinner than on top of her feet? Does it have a pinkish hue to it instead of being dark-colored? Because, if it does, she has the beginnings of bumble foot and what you need to do is get her natural tree branches of different diameters which you should wrap on something soft (I use the quilted-kind of paper towel) so as to make it softer for her feet. This is only a temporary thing until her feet get better if this is the problem. What worries me is that I get the impression from your post that the problem is more than just her limping... See, when birds hurt a foot, all they do is favor it (they put their weight on the other foot and, when they perch and roost, they just retract that foot and use only the 'good' one to hang on to the perch), there is no weakness, no disorientation, no unsteadiness at all.

The other problem could be dietary so, please, tell us what she has been eating all these years so we can determine if it is a dietary problem. The reason why I say that it could be dietary is that certain minerals (like calcium, for example) control movement and muscle elasticity and, when there is a deficiency, it makes them kind of wobbly and disoriented - you posted that she got 'confused' when you changed the placement of her food bowl which is actually very worrisome because birds have excellent vision and are meant to forage (look for food) and even when you try to hide food, they find it so the fact that she couldn't figure out that the food had been moved is a bad sign - worse than her limping, actually.

You mention molting but she is not molting right now, is she? Because this is not the season for them to molt - not in the Northern Hemisphere (they are in breeding season now) and not in the Southern Hemisphere so, if she is, something is wrong with her endocrine system. I don't think that this is linked to the problem she is having now but I though I should mention it because a screwed-up endocrine system means a bird that is not healthy (the endocrine system pretty much governs every function directly or indirectly in the body).

There three other possibilities. One is metal poisoning (it affects the brain functions motor skills). Two is eggbinding and three is liver disease and these two, as different as they are, manifest with the same difficulty to walk. The first one because of the egg that won't come out and the second because the liver becomes enlarged and creates ascites accumulation in the abdomen cavity and birds that don't fly are MUCH more prone to these problems than birds that do because flight exercises the muscles used for pushing the eggs out (no flight = atrophied muscles = no strength to push eggs out) and provides the only way of eliminating toxins/bad hormones fast (birds have no other way of exercising but through flight so no flight = no exercise = bad hormones/toxins cannot dissipate fast enough). Now, these three problems are all serious and kind of urgent in terms of treatment so, please, take that into consideration.

So, let us know what the bottom of her feet look like and what her diet and light schedule are and yes, do keep a vigilant eye on her (I would take out the high perches in her cage and confine her to a small space with a padded bottom and very low perches in case she falls off them) because if her feet are normal and the 'limping' doesn't go away in a couple of days, you are dealing with something much more serious than just a little boo-boo.

[birbmcbirb]

......

[Pajarita]

GREAT NEWS! And what a cutie!!! If the bird is better, then it is not severely deficient in calcium although the diet is really not very good (more on that below). But, the first thing I need to tell you is that your girl is a boy See the medium size feathers under her tail? The ones that don't reach the end of the tail but cover the beginning of it? Those are called tail undercoverts (or tectrices) and they are green in females and yellow in males so your bird is a male. The yellow on his chest -which shows a lot on both sides of the green V and goes all the way up to his 'armpits' is also a sexual characteristic of males, females have more green and little yellow on their chests.

Now, please no Cheerios or any other kind of human cereal! They are super bad for birds because, as they are made for humans, they have a lot of iron (humans need a lot, especially children) and that is not good for birds. Birds need a maximum of 2% iron, Cheerios have high iron content, some of them all the way up to 45%. The thing with iron is that Nature evolved each species in such a way that they derive all their nutritional needs, at their perfect level, from their natural diets so she did not give the body the ability to get rid of most of the excess. When you feed a bird (or any other animal, including humans) too much iron, it goes to the liver to be stored and as it accumulates, it creates a condition called hemochromatosis which is fatal and has no cure or treatment in birds so, please, stop giving him human cereal immediately.

The other problem with the diet is that you are free-feeding seeds and that is always bad for parrots. Parrots are NOT natural seed eaters (canaries and finches are, for example), they eat plant material like buds, leaves, fruits, flowers, etc. They do eat seeds but they are 'green' seeds -meaning the ones inside the fruit- and they do eat nuts, if there are any in their natural environment, but they never find a constant, rich supply of them. People don't realize that nuts and seeds are not found all year round in the wild, they are seasonal elements because they are the reproductive method of the plant and plants don't bloom and give fruit all the time. So, please, discontinue the practice of filling up her bowl with that mix and leaving it there. You can use the mix as dinner for him (just enough to fill up his crop and a teeny, tiny bit more) but you will need to come up with a healthier breakfast. I feed gloop and that is what I recommend everybody feed their parrots because after over 25 years of doing research on their natural diets and nutrition plus observing what they prefer, I have not yet found a better staple. It has low protein, almost no fat, lots of nutritious veggies and whole grains and, most importantly, high moisture (parrots eat a natural diet that is between 85 and 95% water so anything dried is not good for them) and high fiber (again, parrots in the wild eat a diet very high in fiber as it's all plant material).

Also, are you giving him any supplements like a multivitamin/mineral? Because, going by what you posted he eats, if that was all he has been eating all along, he would be severely deficient in calcium. See, the thing with calcium is that you can give an animal all the calcium in the world but it would not make a difference if the animal does not have Vit D3 which is necessary for the calcium to be absorbed into the body. And no plant material has any -it's produced by the body of animals from a chemical reaction to UV light in the sun. So if he had not had any he would be dead by now which makes me think that you feed him animal protein like egg, meat, etc. You say you give him yogurt which I am sure he likes but it's not really good for him. Birds are not mammals so they don't have the necessary enzymes to digest milk products properly so the yogurt is pretty much going in one way and coming out the other. People talk about probiotics in the yogurt but the commercial yogurts have negligible amounts of good bacteria so it doesn't really work for that - they get their digestive enzymes from ripe fruit and veggies. So, if I were you, I would make sure I am supplementing him with Vit D3 because although he can derive all his calcium (and other minerals) from his diet (broccoli and almonds are high in calcium, for example), he needs the vit D3 (and other minerals in balance with calcium). I use ABBA 2000, a multivitamin/mineral in powder form that I put in their waters three times a week but any good avian supplement will do and I would start him with a daily doses for, at least, 3 weeks in a row and then reduce it to three times a week (because he mostly needs it for the vit D3 as he would get all his other vitamins and minerals from a good diet). I would also highly recommend you give him some non-alcoholic, liquid milk thistle extract to help with his liver because he has been eating too much protein, too much fat and too much iron.

And, please, change his perches. Natural tree branches with the bark on them are the best because that is what they evolved to use all their lives in the wild. Concrete or sand perches and ropes (unless they are made of cotton) are too rough and dowels are the worst possible perch for a bird: too rigid, too smooth, too even. Natural branches have 'give' so, when they alight on them, the impact on their joints is much less than when they do it to a rigid dowel. The bark will help with his nails (wears them down naturally) and the different diameters and positions (don't put all the branches perfectly parallel to the floor) keep their toe, foot and leg muscles toned and the soles of their feet healthy (because the pressure is not always in exactly the same spot as it is with perfectly cylindrical dowels - it is this constant pressure in the same spot that causes bumble foot).