Buying Native Foods? Where to Buy Grass?

[Teddscau]

Hey everyone. We've been having...issues...so I haven't been on in a while. Anyways, are there any brands or stores I can buy native foods from? Like gumnuts, whole pine cones, bottlebrush, banksia, grass, nopals, etc? I mean, I found My Parrot Shop which sells native Australian seeds and pods. Unfortunately, it'd be a nightmare trying to get that through Canadian customs. I also found JR Farm, which sells whole natural foods for birds (and other animals). They sell dried switchgrass with the seed still attached to the stems, canary grass attached to the stalks, wheat on stalks, etc. But this company is German and only sells within the U.K.

I can't seem to find any North American suppliers for these yummy foods. I try to collect grass for my birds, but it's hard to find enough, and I can only collect enough to freeze for them to feed them for a few weeks in the winter. My birds are having digestive problems because their diets aren't close enough to their wild diets. Budgies have highly specialized diets, so if they don't get enough seed, they have trouble. It's like a panda without bamboo, a vampire bat without blood, or a koala without eucalyptus. I know it sounds silly, and that most people don't have to feed their budgies special seed, but this is what's happening with my birds. And before anyone says anything, my budgies tend to live far longer than most budgies, so the effects of diets that their digestive tracts haven't evolved to process are evident. Proper nutrition is important for an animal to be healthy, but equally important is feeding them food that their bodies have evolved to process.

Anyways, thanks guys!

 

[plumsmum2005]

Any good for you?
https://sproutpeople.org/sprout-kits/grass-sprout-kits/

 

[Teddscau]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I've kind of been distancing myself from the whole sprout thing. I used to give them sprouts all the time, but the issue of proper sanitation has been floating around, so I've decided against it. However, I will be growing grass for them next year, so they'll be getting a lot of delicious grass seed to eat. I'm also thinking of maybe trying to grow them grains in the side yard. I'll also be growing eucalyptus and bottlebrush, but I don't imagine that'll go well. Stupid bottlebrush takes forever to grow from see, and unless you mist the seed trays every couple of hours, they dry out and wilt >_<