Hello,

We purchased a young quaker parrot several weeks ago. He is now 3.5 months old. He was weaned shortly before we purchased him, and he has had no problem eating the entire time he's lived in our home. He eats Zupreem FruitBlend pellets and Fanta seed (medium birds), but mostly the seeds. We provide fresh fruits & vegetables, too, but he doesn't show any interest in them. I was told that we should eventually switch him to mostly pellets, but that it's good to let them have a lot of seeds when they're this young, because they can loose weight after being weaned.

He seems like a happy bird. Enjoys being handled, sleeps well at night, plays in his cage, eats, drinks, etc.

When we took him for a vet checkup a few days after bringing him home, the vet said he was fine. The vet suggested a blood test for a common pet bird disease (I'm drawing a blank right now) and that came back negative, too. The vet stressed that it's important to monitor the bird's weight, so we got a little scale and have been weighing him about once a week.

The problem is that over the last few weeks, he has been losing weight instead of gaining it. He has gone from 105g to 95g (so nearly 10% of his body weight). He eats off and one all day long, and we're offering the food we were told to offer, so it's not obvious to me what the problem is. I don't even know if this is normal. Do quakers loose some weight for a few weeks before gaining it again, after they've been weaned?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom

Tom, can I ask when you weigh your Quaker? To get the most accurate weight, they should be weighed first thing in the morning...before they eat and after they poop. Having a full crop can affect weight, as can additional wing feathers (has he been clipped at all during this time?).

What I would do is check his weight in the morning for a solid week. If he loses weight during that time, then get him into the vet. If he stays steady, then keep weighing him for another week. If it remains the same (or almost, a gram or two is a normal difference) then he most likely is fine.

With my birds, their weight can fluctuate throughout the day. It isn't uncommon for my Quaker to weigh 107 in the morning, but go up to 112 during the day.

try giving offering him some different types of treats- Millet is a good one that helps wih giving him alittle bit of weight but not to much..lol. you also have to remember quakers are active little guys too so their weight goes up and down.

We've been weighing him around noon on Saturdays. I'll try weighing first thing in the morning every day. If it's that variable, it would be good to have a larger sample of measurements, for one thing. Thanks.




OK - I just added some treats to the offerings in there. We'll see how that goes. Thanks.

Hi Tom,

My quaker, Cricket, is 5 months old. I had the same problem with him. Before he left the store he weighed 102 grams and when I took him back for another weigh in a month later he only weighed 95 grams. That really scared me.

I would feed him cooked oatmeal mixed with a fruity baby food for breakfast and he had pellets for the rest of the day. After he lost weight I wondered if maybe I wasn't feeding him enough even though he had his pellets.

The next night when I got home from work I tried feeding him a veggie baby food and he ate it like he was starving! i felt like a horrible mommy... I had no idea he was so hungry at night when he still had pellets in his bowl.

So now he gets his oatmeal in the morning... pellets during the day... and a veggie or protein baby food for dinner with occasional safflower seeds. i haven't weighed him again but I can tell he's gained weight.

He's being picky about fresh fruits and veggies too but my Cricket and your baby boy are still young. I'm finding that Cricket is beginning to become more interested in what I'm eating lately. He actually stuck his head into my popcorn bowl and pulled a piece out the other night.

So I have great hope that he'll start eating healthier soon!

I know 95 grams is a little low. Gizmo was a little thin so we started feeding him seeds, birdie bread with olive oil, and things with a bit of fat. Birds can weigh 5 grams more at night then in the morning so take that in to consideration,

Thanks! I'll give that a whirl.

In the wild, the heaviest a bird would be is right at weaning. As they get a bit older and are fine tuning their foraging skills, they will drop a bit of weight. I would definately keep an eye on the weight and maybe have your vet check for gaurdia, if they haven't already. Some quakers are just a bit lighter than others...but if he stays around that 95 gram mark, that would be ok.

I have to agree with Carrie~Anne.....about weighing. The first time you weighed was it in the morning? How about the 2nd time, was it about the same time? I didn't read your post thoroughly. I remember when I came to this forum I weighed my Mr. Kiwi throughout the day and was really concerned because his weight fluctuated so much and then I found out why.

I had a scale but its unaccurate one day 100 one day 80 and even 95 dont ask.

OK, here's a followup.

Although it seemed our parrot (Keyser Soze) was about 95g, our cheap scale seemed to be wildly inaccurate. The weight was just all over the place, even taking measurements back to back. It looked like the uncertainty was at the 10g level or so.

So, I bought a digital scale accurate to 0.1g, and I've weighed him every morning this week. The result: 80g every day for a week straight, to within 0.5g. So, he's not losing weight, and I have confidence in the measurements I'm getting, but this is a lot less than 95g. Given the problems with the original scale, I have no idea what he weighed when we got him.

He's still eating a lot all day long, poops a lot all day long, and seems happy. He plays, likes being handled, etc. Is 80g a terribly low weight for a 4 month old quaker? Some of you were saying you have quakers around 100g, but I'm guessing they're full grown. What do you think?

Tom those weights are an average...most of the time....because there are 4 species of Quaker and each one has just a little different stature in their pure state from my understanding that's how they originally distinguished the different species...Because the 4 different sub species have been crossed and re crossed who knows how many times its hard to go by just weight for any given bird. If you feel the keel bone (breast bone) if its sharp and protrusive then he is under weight if you can feel the keel and yet feel firm meat on either side of the keel while feeing the keel then they are pretty "normal" if you can see a bit of cleavage on either side of the keel and its soft and squishy that's a good indication that they are over weight.

But to be sure for your particular bird, it might be worth the second trip to the vet just to have his weight checked and have the vet give you their opinion as to whether he's too thin or not. Its worth the price of the vet bill just for peace of mind, in my opinion.

Plus I'd keep weighing him regularly now that you have an accurate scale and see if he continues to drop...if he does, its cause for worry and definitely a vet trip.

Keep us posted

Tom? Is your Quaker a blue or a green Quaker? Blues tend to be much smaller then the Green ones, so if he's a Blue, then that might explain the low weight.

80 grams is pretty low, even for a Blue, so you might want to get him into the vet and have a vet see how his weight is. He could just have a small bone structure and that weight may be perfect for him. But a vet will be able to tell you that, or tell you if you need to pack on the pounds

hehe...Connie, ya beat me to it!!!

Thanks again for the replies. This forum is a great resource.

He's a green quaker, although his parents were a "green/blue" and a "blue" according to the breeder (she gave us a certificate).

This morning he was 81g. I felt his breastbone and it's hard for me to say how "normal" it is without comparing to other parrots. It definitely feels like a ridge, but there's a bit of soft flesh on each side of it.

I've been trying to talk my wife into letting me take him back to the vet for a 2nd trip, but she doesn't want to do this unnecessarily, because he could catch something off sick birds at the vet. She's a teacher and off for the summer (starting last week), so she's been feeding him by hand several times a day to make sure he's getting enough food. At the suggestion of a couple of other people who have birds, she's been giving him the bird baby food that is given to birds when weaning them. He gobbles that stuff up, and still eats his other stuff all day (seeds & pellets).

From looking around this forum, it seems that he should be adult size by now, so my one theory (that he was still growing) is shot down. They reach full size at 12 weeks - right?

Thanks again.

It is around there 81 grams is low for a full or almost grown quaker. I suggest you taking a few pics from different angles as we may be able to tell if he is underweight for sie but def. take him to the vet. Thanks for the update.

Yay! Our bird is ok!

Just to close the loop here:
We took our bird to the vet today, and he said we have a perfectly healthy, happy bird. Keyser is just a very small quaker, according to the vet. The vet said that for Keyser's first appointment a month ago, he weighed only 76g, so he's actually gained 4 or 5 grams. The vet said that there's a pretty wide range in quaker size, and ours is one of the smaller ones. Keyser is also probably a female, given this size, even though we think of him as a male. I guess it wouldn't hurt to have him(her) sexed one of these days.

Thanks again for all the helpful comments here. It was worth checking into this, just in case.

Yay! That's great news!

Wooooohoooooo what a relief!!! Glad that everything is okay, Tom!

And thanks for keeping us updated!