(birds screeching)
- Guess what kind
of birds are going to be behind me in a second?
Super excited, you guys have been asking forever.
(loud screech)
It's not that one.
(upbeat techno music)
Hey guys, so I am here today with Mel.
She is a blogger for a long time for Bird Tricks,
and I have had the first opportunity to come out here
and actually meet her in person, which has been amazing.
The other side of it is I get to
meet all of her Eclectus parrots.
Now, we don't get as many Eclectus parrots
in the U.S at least through our consultations and stuff.
They are not as common as I'm
learning they are in Australia.
- Very common.
- And you guys have been asking me
to do a lot of Eclectus videos.
I've been uncomfortable doing them
because I don't have actually have an Eclectus to show.
But today Mel is lending me hers.
- Yep, some of them anyway.
(laughter)
- So this is really cool.
I'm excited to show you guys the differences
between the males and the females.
And most of all, this video is going
to be really focusing in on diet, because a lot
of you are very confused about how the Eclectus diet differs
from all the parrot diets that we talk
about consistently about Macaws, Cockatoos
African Grays, Conures, Budgies, all the like.
So we are going to be tackling the diet today,
and as you can see, these guys
are feasting in the background.
So we're going to talk about diet
and show you exactly what it is they eat
and what they like as treats and the whole caboodle.
Luckily, Mel has both male and female
here for me to show you guys, so let's get to it.
Camera faces on.
Okay, so you guys ask me all the time,
can my seasonal feeding system be used on Eclectus parrots?
And it's really interesting, because I feel
like people almost view Eclectus parrots like the Lorries
or the Lorikeets where it's so drastically different
that you can't do anything the same.
That is not the case, so I wanted to talk
to you guys today about what is actually different
about the Eclectus parrot compared to say the Macaw,
the African Gray, or the birds that you see a lot more
in my videos, and what their diet actually should be.
What these guys got this morning was actually
my seasonal feeding system.
So yes, they can eat that,
and it is a great diet for them.
So Mel, will you help me explain
to everybody what is different in the Eclectus parrot as far
as how their digestive system works,
and just the intestines and the proventricular,
just everything, will you help me
kind of convey what is different and what is the same?
- Look, these guys have a longer digestive system, is
probably the easiest way to explain it.
- Yeah.
- Whatever they eat, tend to hold onto longer.
So they've got more time to actually process it.
So if you're feeding a high fat diet
they're going to absorb more fat than the average parrot.
- Okay. - Which is a bit of a problem.
- Yes.
- Why the Vertrix diet works with
these guys is it's actually a healthy diet.
It is not a high fat diet.
It has the right mix of vitamins and minerals through it
so that they're getting what they need.
You can see from these guys,
it's almost like they glow in the dark, they're so shiny.
- Yes.
- These guys have been on the Vertrix diet now
for years, and I can't fault their physical condition.
- Yeah.
- They do have a very high vitamin A need.
So that means the basic rule of having something orange
or red and your vegetables in
every single mix, that covers that.
- And I think the misconception there is when
when most people hear vitamin A deficiency, they think
so what supplement do I give?
Because a lot of my viewers are used
to a calcium deficiency, say, in African Grays,
and so we can give a calcium supplement,
that is not the case, or not the road
that you wanna take with the Eclectus.
You don't want to be going and seeking
out this kind of vitamin supplement,
what do you want to be doing instead?
- You want to actually be giving the natural diet
that has those vitamins in it.
The best advice I can give you,
if you're giving a supplement, it's straight vitamin A.
You've got no control over how much vitamin A
the bird absorbed, it's whatever is in that supplement.
- Yeah.
- If you give them a carrot,
it's got better keratin in it,
they convert that to vitamin A
and they only convert what they need,
so you're not going to overdose them,
which is the main difference.
- I love that.
And again, in my cookbook, I go over
and I have a page dedicated to how
often you should give certain foods and veggies,
as most of you know, who have the book unlimited.
So you're not going to overdose these guys on carrots.
- Yeah, carrots, capsicum, I think you
call them bell peppers. - Yes.
I've been hearing capsicum a lot lately.
- We've been having some language problems here.
(laughter)
- Yeah, so if you guys need to Google Translate
any of the recipe ingredients,
we have gotten that a bit
from the Ozzies they're they're like, wait, what is that?
- Yeah, we go what is a garbanzo bean?
And it's a chickpea.
(laughter)
Yeah, it's proper fun, isn't it?
- It is.
- When we're not confusing you with our slang.
- Oh yeah, your slang.
(laughing)
One of the reasons that I really wanted to
do this video is because I feel as passionate
about the Eclectus diet needing to be understood as I do
about it for the Galahs, because they are prone to obesity
and fatty tumors, and I kind of feel
like the Eclectus is the same
as where they're an ultra sensitive
bird when it comes to diet.
So out of all the parrot species that you're gonna have,
you're gonna notice it affect
these types of species quicker.
- Yeah, I would agree. - Yeah.
So diet again, I know I stress it a lot
especially lately in a lot of my videos, but I feel
like it's because it constantly comes up,
and Mel's been here for a lot of
our master classes here in Australia,
and we have seen Eclectus parrots from like
beautiful feathering-
- To really appalling and black.
- And I actually got confused
about the species and I was like, wait
how many subspecies are they are there?
Because they all looked so different.
And one of the interesting things that I didn't realize
about their coloring was that when
they pluck or like self mutilate
their feathers actually turn another color.
- Yeah, these guys can often have yellow feathers where
they've plucked or damaged the feather follicles.
A lot of vets will sometimes misdiagnose a liver
problem, thinking that that's a sign of a liver issue.
And it's actually that they've damaged the feather follicles
although it can be a liver problem.
So look, these guys get blood tests every single year.
So I know what their health is like.
I can tell you that our kids tend to
have a slightly higher cholesterol
than my other parrots,
and that's what's normal for them.
- [Jamieleigh] Yes.
- As long as I'm monitoring their own personal levels
and comparing it to their own blood.
So I know whether I'm doing better
or doing worse, and what I need to change.
- Awesome, and one of the correlations
that we actually went over
with one of our clients, which again,
Mel has been here for our entire tour,
so she listened to all of it,
is we had a client who asked me outright.
She was just like, but what do you do for the Eckie diet?
Because what about toe tapping?
Like, do you ever come across that?
And the crazy thing is, is that yes,
I actually came across toe tapping with Bondai
when we first had our, you know,
misunderstanding about what we were supposed to feed.
We thought we could feed abundance of fruit just as much
as vegetables, which was completely off-kilter.
And what happened was I basically over-medicated
Bondai as far as supplements and vitamins.
So kind of what we're talking about, how to avoid.
I went for Harrison's high potency
and just thought I'm going to get all the vitamins
and minerals I can in her, she turned red,
she turned greasy and she started toe-tapping,
'cause it was hyper vitamin gnosis.
So that's what I really wanna do, is discourage anybody to
go do, is-
- Hi.
(laughter)
- We just doubled. - This is DJ.
Oh thanks, we really needed to snort a little.
- Oh, it was a snort, okay.
Well, it would have been cuter if you-
- He's got passion fruit up his nose.
(laughter)
- So again, the main reason that I created this seasonal
feeding system that I did, was to help and benefit birds
that are incredibly sensitive, like the Galahs and here
like the Eclectus parrot, so it's
incredibly important to make sure
that these birds are getting the proper diet.
Also, I know that a lot of people tend to feed these guys
seeds, and I've seen what it does to their feathering,
and it tends to affect them, again,
like I said just rather quickly.
So I feel like people could get away with that with
the Macaw and still have really nice looking plumage
for a lot longer than how quickly it affects the Eckies.
So just in general, make sure that diet is your number
one priority when it comes to, if you have an Eclectus
parrot, or if you know somebody that does have them
and loves to snort them all over your face.
(laughing)
- Thank you, now.
- We say fruit three times a week.
The snorting is just getting me.
- One of the ways to tell that these guys actually
have a vitamin deficiency is by actually
looking at the back of their throat.
It almost looks like teeth.
They're called Choanal, and they're
like jagged little triangles.
When these guys have a vitamin A deficiency,
they get covered in a white plaque
and it can be quite obvious,
and those very sharp teeth
looking things become very dull and blunt
and rounded, which tells you you've got a problem.
And that's when you need to feed vitamin A.
- Yeah.
- And they can recover from that too.
You've seen the female Eclectus that I've got here.
She came in in really poor shape.
She had no wings, no tail, her
Choanal were just terrible, thick white plaque
over everything at the back of the throat, 12 months later,
now she's bright shiny, that's normalized,
her blood's normalized, and the main difference is diet.
- Yeah, that's amazing.
And I will say like, even the photos that we get
from people, you know-
- You're getting heavy, fatso!
(laughter)
- Using the cookbook and using
pellets and using just a better quality
of everything and showing the before and after pictures,
It's a game changer guys.
I can't stress how important diet is,
especially for these guys.
So just make sure you're doing it right.
And, and they'll look like this, bright and shiny!
- Which is what they should look, yeah.
No black stress bars, that's what you want.
- Yeah, thank you, Mel,
And thank you to DJ and Pepe, DJ and Pepe?
- DJ, Pepe.
They are actually different subspecies too,
so you've got a Vos on my right shoulder,
and a Solomon Island, which is why DJ's a little bit smaller
and able to hide behind my ponytail better.
- And what's the age difference?
- Pepe's actually 14.
- Okay.
- DJ's on the roundabout four. - Awesome.
- So quite a difference, yeah.
- Yeah, so if you guys want to see more Eckie videos,
let us know in the comments and thank you, Mel
for letting me use your guys.
- Not a problem.
- And their messy faces.
- You never know what this one's going to say.
(laughter)
- Does he say anything on cue?
- Not particularly, no.
He waits till it's the most inappropriate time.
Like when you're in the hardware store with him
on a harness and he'll do an imitation of a machine gun,
and ends with this really bright, powerful howl,
it sounds kind of like a massacre, doesn't it?
Yeah, they asked me to see if I
could make my bird sound less like a
massacre if I come back in and I'm standing there,
but you don't say that to the dog owners.
You were naughty, weren't you?
Yeah.