One of my gouldians died this week, and I'm not positive why. The other 5 seem to be fine and in good spirits. The only thing that's different is that I switched them to an "austerity diet"--so I removed their eggfood, millet, calcium---basically everything but seed, water, and dried greens.
I also bought a "plainer" seed mix--normally I buy one with those faux-colored nutrient pellets in it, but I decided to cheap out and got a more basic seed mix. I noticed some of the seeds in there were larger than I'd seen before, but as it was a finch seed mix, I didn't think much of it.
Now I'm suspecting that due to the larger seeds, their food was not properly running through their seed hopper and this caused my 1 to starve. This is pure speculation though. Or, maybe the seed wasn't high enough quality, and malnutrition was the culprit. I really am not 100% positive here, the last time I saw her she was acting fine and looking healthy like the others. She finished her molt about 3 weeks ago or so.
I'm posting this to see if anyone has some thoughts/insight. I also took some images of her post-mortem, but I don't want to post them unless someone gives it the OK.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I'm very sad!
