The Most Nutritious Birdie Bread

Hey everyone! I came up with an awesome recipe for birdie bread! Noah loves it. I came up with this recipe using the Wholesome Pro app. It costs around $5, and you can set it up for the nutritional requirements of parrots.

Depending on the size of your bird, this recipe could provide anywhere from 30—70+ servings.

This is one of the most nutritionally complete recipes you'll find for birdie bread. I will admit that this recipe doesn't have as much folate, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, or choline as I'd like, but the minimum requirements of folate, pantothenic acid, and riboflavin for parrots are met. Obviously, this birdie bread doesn't have any B12 in it, as B12 can only be obtained from consuming soil or synthetic vitamins. The B12 found in meats, dairy, and eggs is present only due to contamination.

2 cups wheat germ
1 cup buckwheat flour, whole-groat
1 cup rice flour, brown
1/2 cup hulled sunflower seeds
1/2 cup almonds
2 cups blackberries
2 cups raspberries
1 (or two) whole bananas
1 cup cooked broccoli
1 cup cooked collard greens
3 cups cooked sweet potato
2 tbsp ground flax seed

1. Put the wheat germ, buckwheat flour, and rice flour in a large bowl.

2. Measure 1/2 cup of hulled sunflower seeds and thoroughly grind in a clean coffee grinder. Put the groundsunflower seeds in the bowl with the flours.

3. Measure 1/2 cup of almonds (unsalted, human grade, etc.) and thoroughly grind in the coffee grinder. Put the ground almonds in the bowl with the flours and ground sunflower seeds. You can also add some powdered eggshell (3 or more teaspoons) for extra calcium.

4. Grind flax seed in a coffee grinder until thoroughly ground. Measure 2 tbsp of ground flax seed (flax meal) and put in a small bowl. Add 6 tbsp of water in the small bowl and thoroughly mix. Place the mixture in the fridge for 15 minutes until it becomes the consistency of a bowl of raw eggs. These are flax eggs and will be used to bind the ingredients together.

5. Cook broccoli, collard greens, and sweet potato in a steamer. Once they're cooked, put 1 cup of cooked broccoli, 1 cup of cooked collard greens, and 3 cups of cooked sweet potato in a food processor.

6. Purée the ingredients. Once thoroughly puréed, add the raspberries, blackberries, and the banana to the purée, and purée again. You can add an extra banana or two for flavour.

7. Next, put the purée in the large bowl that has the dry ingredients in it. Add the flax eggs, which you made in Step 4, and thoroughly mix everything together. You can add 1/2 cup of pellets to the mix, if you want.

8. Grease one (or more) glass baking dishes (the kind you'd bake butter tart squares in) with coconut oil, or some other oil safe for birds. Pour the birdie bread batter into the dish(es). You'll want the batter to be 2" thick. Even out the batter. You'll want this to bake at 350° for 45 minutes or so. You'll want it to be moist, but not too moist.

9. Once it's been taken out of the oven and has cooled, you can cut it into serving sized pieces for your bird(s). You can keep some in the fridge, and freeze the rest to be used at a later time. This can be served at room temperature or slightly warm. Make sure it isn't too warm, as birds' mouths can burn easily.


This recipe has been formulated in accordance to three different reports on avian dietary requirements:
http://avianmedicine.net/content/uploads/2013/03/04nutrition1.pdf
https://www.parrotsociety.org.au/articles/avian-nutrition

I love your nutrition posts! I rarely bake, but this makes me want to.

Thank you for sharing! I am going to try this one, sounds awesome.

Will try! Nigel's a foodie but it takes him a few tries to trust that the new food will not eat him instead. #africangreylife

Is this good for budgies?...some photos?

Sent from my ZUK Z1 using Tapatalk

This birdie bread is definitely awesome. If I had to choose between this and raw veggies, I'd eat the bread. This recipe is good for almost all parrots, although the amazons should only have small amounts because of the protein content. I honestly tried to keep the protein and fat content low, but I didn't have much luck. I'll try to post some pictures soon.

By the way, I'm really glad you guys like the recipe . I hope your birds like it. I hope MY budgies will like it. My budgies want fresh, whole foods, not this baked nonsense I keep giving them.

If you like what you've read so far, then you'll love this:

This recipe makes ~887g (excluding moisture), which means that the amount of each nutrient and the percentage... Okay, so I'm just going to write down roughly the amount of each nutrient. I'm also writing down what percentage of a parrot's dietary requirement...

Just to give you an idea of what each percent means: Studies show that parrots need 1,500μg of vitamin A per kilogram of (dry) feed, therefore, since this recipe contains 6,650μg of vitamin A in 887g (we've subtracted the moisture content to calculate this), 500% of the recommended amount of vitamin A for 887g of dry feed is being met.

Here is the nutritional content of this recipe:

MACRONUTRIENTS
Carbohydrate– 594.36g or ~79% (would ideally be 753.95g or 85% of diet)
Protein– 142.59g or ~161% (would ideally be 88.7g or 10% of diet)
Fat– 117.25g or ~264% (would ideally be 44.35g or 5% of diet)

VITAMINS
Vitamin A– 6650μg or ~500%
B6– 8.98mg or ~81%
B12– 0%
Folate– 1329.58μg or ~60%
Niacin– 57.24mg or ~86%
Pantothenic Acid– 18.30mg or ~51%
Riboflavin– 3.89mg or ~31%
Thiamin– 8.04mg or ~121%
Vitamin C– 391.20mg or ~4,410%
Vitamin D– 0%
Vitamin E– 59.12mg or ~50%
Vitamin K– 1092.50μg or ~15,396%
Choline– 439.14mg or ~66%

MINERALS
Calcium– 1166.58mg or ~19% (add 3 teaspoons of eggshell to achieve ~100%)
Copper– 7.02mg or ~99%
Iron– 41.08mg or ~58%
Magnesium– 1912.66mg or ~359%
Manganese– 50.93mg or ~88%
Phosphorus– 4466.86mg or ~72% or ~144% (depending on whether you want a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio of calcium to phosphorous)
Potassium– 9198.52mg or ~259%
Selenium– 241.99μg or ~273%
Sodium– 379.84mg or ~21%
Zinc– 48.33mg or ~109%

Would this be good for an Amazon? He's a seed addict, and I have him partially eating a birdie bread that was made for a macaw, which is really too high fat for him, but better than the all seed diet he's been on (he'd starve himself rather than eat anything else...MrC has been struggling with this for years).

It looks like something that might be worth my effort to make and get him converted to at least partially if he'll eat it.

Teddscau thank you very much!...another question how many spoons I can give every day to one budgie?

Sent from my ZUK Z1 using Tapatalk

[/URL][/IMG]
http://photobucket.com/albums/af70/teddscau/Parrot Recipes Okay, just click the link for the picture. Yay! I did it!

I had "your" boy in the back of my mind when I was posting this, Beatrice. It is a bit high in protein, so you might want to half the amount of almonds, although it will affect the amount of B-complex vitamins. I absolutely hated dealing with the B-complex when trying to come up with this recipe, as they're not only water-soluble, but also a pain in the butt to achieve sufficient amounts of. The foods they're found in tend to be fortified human foods, mushrooms, avocados, fatty foods, and other garbage that I don't really want to include in a recipe. If I were you, I'd look into Nekton's B-complex supplement.

This is pretty rich in healthy fats, so hopefully he'd try it. I mean, yeah, this is a bit high in terms of fat content, but the fats come from healthy ingredients that make this recipe so rich in vitamins and minerals. A lot of pellets have fats from unhealthy sources (peanuts, soybeans, etc.), while this has healthy fats from fresh almonds, vitamin E rich raw sunflower seeds, and nutritious sweet potato. It definitely beats seed, though.

As for your budgie, ppprc, this could easily make up a third of your bird's diet. Although this birdie bread is a little "deficient" in some areas, it's probably better than what you'd get from overly-fortified, highly processed pellets.

Oh, just a heads up, I don't want you guys thinking I'm sort of nutrition guru. I just spent many painful hours trying to find studies on parrot nutrition that give actual recommended amounts of vitamins and minerals, rather than the typical "Your bird should have lots of vitamin A rich foods." Also, the Wholesome Pro app is a huge help. It took me forever to input the amounts of vitamins and whatnot because I had to convert them to weird units of measurement for the app.

I guess I should mention that this recipe makes 2284 grams of food.

This looks like an excellent recipe, thank you so much for sharing! I think even my pickiest birds will love this.

Before I go making this for my fids, is it ok for a budgie to eat this? I recall in a previous post response to me somewhere that budgies are allergic to sweet potatoes. Don’t recall which post so that’s why I’m asking before I make this. I’ve avoided sweet potatoes because of that response in the past. Not even sure if it’s true now that I’m re-looking up whether budgies can eat sweet potatoes or not. Maybe it was yams..... I’m not sure any more. But better to ask before I make it, than make it and potentially be sorry later.

AkridChaos said:

Before I go making this for my fids, is it ok for a budgie to eat this? I recall in a previous post response to me somewhere that budgies are allergic to sweet potatoes. Don’t recall which post so that’s why I’m asking before I make this. I’ve avoided sweet potatoes because of that response in the past. Not even sure if it’s true now that I’m re-looking up whether budgies can eat sweet potatoes or not. Maybe it was yams..... I’m not sure any more. But better to ask before I make it, than make it and potentially be sorry later.

Click to expand...

My budgies love cooked sweet potatoes, and have had no ill effects from them at all

Heyy, great recipe! Though I read a few comments sayingthat for an Amazon it would be a bit too fatty/high on protein. Anyone could tell me any switches that could be made so it is healthier for my Blue-front?

LuceandEllie said:

Heyy, great recipe! Though I read a few comments sayingthat for an Amazon it would be a bit too fatty/high on protein. Anyone could tell me any switches that could be made so it is healthier for my Blue-front?

Click to expand...

It’s not really an issue. Reason is because one would assume this isn’t the sole dietary source for your birds. Feed this to your bird for a few days...it’s perfectly fine. Parrot diet, assuming your feeding fresh food, is going to ebb and flow, since you’re mixing up what you feed them all the time. Some mixes will be higher in calcium and vitamin b another may be wholly devoid of any protein at all.

So unless you’re planning on making this your birds only source of food for the rest of its life or a seriously extended period of time, do t worry about a little extra protein or fat here and there.

Fat, btw, is coming largely from the nuts and seeds. Not a bad thing though given many of the fats from flax seed are actually very good fats (omega 3/6/9 fatty acids). Protein largely from nuts, wheat ,and broccoli to a lesser extent.

This looks great! Thank you for posting.
I think I'll be having a day baking specifically for my birds some time soon.