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Health and Healing
Glandular System
Hi Gudrun, If you had said your macaw with diabetes was a red-fronted macaw, I would have had a suggestion, but the blue and golds are quite different.
There is a correlation between the red-fronted macaws and the native Pima tribe. Both subsisted as part of their natural diets on nopal fruits and and the seeds of leguminaceous trees. Nopal is prickley pear cactus and leguminaceous trees are probably mesquite beans. This is a very high-fiber diet.
Blue and gold macaws consume fruit, seeds, nuts, and some vegetable matter as their natural diet. Their natural diet is also high fiber but with the difference of increased fat.
When the Pima indians abandoned the diet of their ancestors and started eating the high-fat/highly refined foods prominent in western culture, they developed problems of diabetes and obesity. This is a genetic predisposition which is a pancreatic adaptation to their traditional environmental/dietary niche. In their case, there is really nothing to 'heal' because the way their pancreas functions is normal and healthy for them as long as they stick to their ancestral diet.
By the same token, a high fiber/lower fat diet is an evolutionary characteristic of the red-fronted macaw and a high fiber/higher fat diet is normal for the blue and gold macaw. If you see glucose soaring on your blue and gold when you stop feeding a high fiber diet, what are you feeding instead? What are the normal glucose values for a blue and gold?
I'd stick with a diet as natural as possible, and if the bird's pancreas is not functioning properly when it is fed a diet that is natural for it, then I'd probably supplement with nopal. You can obtain Nopal as a dietary supplement in powdered capsule form. Nature's Sunshine carries this product. I'm not a distributor, but I think we have list members who are. Perhaps they will contact you. If not, there is a link to Nature's Sunshine on the links page of the Holistic Bird Website,
gloria
For those who are experiencing problems with either thyroid function,
and usually feather picking to go with it, my question would be what
extent the bird receives full natural light, or full spectrum
supplementation. Light plays an important role in the regulation of
thyroid function in birds.
Most birds that are suffering from thyroid deficiencies and are
unresponsive to either dietary or drug intervention in restoring balance
are in truth suffering from an insufficiency of regular photoperiod to
stimulate the pituitary and pineal glands. In many cases, both thyroid
and plucking conditions can be simply remedied by the application of
proper light in a regular photoperiod.
Patrick Thrush