The pictures below are before and after photos of my Timneh African grey's flight feathers during a time in his life where his diet was a bit out of whack. In December of 2003, I brought home a baby male Eclectus who was weaned onto a very good diet of varied food. My grey, Tuchis, took an immediate interst in my Ekkie's every move and started doing whatever my Ekkie, Cooper, did, including mimicking his eating habits. So, I went from having a picky grey eater to a grey who would eat just about anything.

Because Eclectus require a diet that includes more fresh foods and less, if any pellets, I started to offer fresh foods at every meal to my grey and my Cockatoo. I was stunned to see Tuchis gobbling up food that I could never get him to eat prior to this time. I was also still feeding him Zupreem colored pellets and offering a few of the Roudybush pellets that Cooper had been weaned onto as well.

Around this time, I had also decided to let Tuchie's flight feathers grow in and one day in April of 2004, while I was examining the new flights that were coming in, I was devastated to see how awful they looked. I took pictures of the flights to get opinions from people on the groups that I belonged to and most people agreed that what I was seeing were stress bars and barbered feathers and that it was probably related to diet. This puzzled me greatly because Tuchis was eating better than he had ever eaten before. This was when I found out about the Feeding Feathers group.

Over the next several months, I learned more than I ever thought one could know about nutrition and then some. I removed all foods that contained any preservatives or synthetic vitamins from my birds' diets. I thought that I had been feeding good food with things like Crazy Corn because it seemed healthier, but I was forgetting that the pasta in the mix was probably fortified, so I stopped offering that as well. I learned how to sprout for my birds. I started mixing my own dry food mix with only seed and other components that contained no "extras" like the Just Veggies line that contain no sugars, salt, or sulfur. I changed my pellets to Foundation Formula's Spicers Blend which is totally organic and contains no soy, peanuts, or Spirulina. I even went as far as to pull all corn and all products containing any corn from my birds' diets.

By early June, I took another set of pictures of Tuchie's wings and as you can see, there were drastic improvements. The only conclusion I can come to is that, because Tuchis was suddenly eating a healthy diet and he was still eating pellets containing all the synthetic vitamins as well, that he was recieving too much of a good thing.

I'm still on the Feeding Feathers list and I'm still learning. It's a process that is continuous and never-ending. I'm always changing the diet here and there, adding things, taking things out, trying new things, etc. Corn is back in, but I have pretty much stopped cooking for my guys, offering mostly raw, fresh food that is pretty much accepted by all but my Patagonian Conure who I am still diligently working with.

Pictures taken in mid-April 2004 Old Non-Barbered Side	Pictures taken in beginning of June 2004 New Non-Barbered Side
Pictures taken mid-April 2004 Old Barbered Side	Pictures taken beginning of June 2004 New Barbered Side