Polly wanna Big Mac? Apparently, yes. And a handful of Doritos, too.
Many pet birds eat nothing but junk food, says Lorelei Tibbetts, a licensed veterinary technician and manager of the Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine on the Upper West Side.
So just as Jamie Oliver embarks on trying to change Americans’ unhealthy eating habits with his “Food Revolution,” Tibbetts and her team of vets have begun battling avian obesity and poor nutrition with “Birdie Conversion Camp,” a diet boot camp for birds.
The center started the camp in January after discovering many of its clients were feeding their birds unhealthy seeds, peanuts and bread.
“One client fed her bird Doritos and Twizzlers,” Tibbetts says. “She would tell us McDonald’s was his favorite.” That bird came to the center overweight, with liver disease and respiratory problems.
While obesity is dangerous for all animals, it particularly affects birds, whose small frames can’t support the extra weight. Without a healthy diet, they can develop tumors and even diabetes, which is untreatable in birds.
Problem is, it’s not so easy to put a bird on a diet.
“Birds are notoriously picky eaters,” Tibbetts explains. “They will refuse food if it’s a shape or texture they dislike.”
Tibbetts says these unhealthy eating habits usually begin in pet stores, where baby birds are weaned on sugary seeds. And once a bird gets hooked, it won’t eat anything else. “It’s possible for a bird to starve themselves,” Tibbetts says.
That’s why many owners don’t have the willpower to change their birds’ diets. “They don’t want their bird to look at them with sad eyes,” Tibbetts laughs. So they send them to camp, where “sad eyes” aren’t allowed.
Toys aren’t permitted either, nor are multiple visits from doting owners, whose presence could cause the bird to regress into bad habits. While the birds are at the three-week, $495 camp, it’s all about nutritious pellets, exotic nuts and raw fruits and vegetables in many forms. “Sometimes [a bird] wants to pick up a whole piece of carrot with their foot; others want the carrot shredded into tiny pieces,” says Tibbetts.
While exercise isn’t a part of the on-site program, birds are encouraged to fly around the house when back at home. If a bird can’t fly, Tibbetts suggests wing-flapping exercises. “If they do that for three to five minutes, it really increases their heart rate.”
Back at camp, birds weigh in twice a day, and vets constantly monitor their droppings to assess whether they’ve eaten. Once “converted” — and so far, all 10 campers have been — they’re sent home with a report card detailing their new diet.
Johnny, a 16-year-old cockatiel, is one of those converted campers. Until his owner, Ruth Nardini, rescued him earlier this year, “he was eating horrific seed from Wal-Mart that smelled old and moldy,” Nardini says. He also lived in a cage so small he couldn’t spread his wings. With zero exercise and poor nutrition, Johnny was in kidney failure, and was so distressed he had plucked all of his feathers.
Nardini knew she couldn’t handle putting Johnny on a diet herself. “It’s like parenting,” she says. “You don’t want to see somebody you love uncomfortable or agitated.” So she enrolled him in camp, and in less than a week, Johnny was off the seeds and eating vitamin-packed pellets. He also took a liking to parsley.
“He’s a different bird,” Nardini says. “He used to shriek all the time; now, he’s singing and whistling, and when you come in the room he gives you a ‘Woohoo!’” He also has new feathers.