Healthy Diet?

[Vilatus]

Hi everyone.

Iggy's gone and done it again. This is the 3rd egg, but at least she waited a few weeks. Now I'm curious about how I can improve her diet to at least make sure she's got the proper nutrition if she does lay every so often.

Right now, she eats Zupreem fruit pellets, and millet. I also give her a seed mix with fruit and veggies as a treat when she comes out. Unfortunately I haven't had much luck with veggies, but she's warming up to dried fruit bits. Should I switch pellets? Any suggestions would be helpful, I'm worried for her.

 

[itzjbean]

I feed my cockatiels the same Zupreem pellets and they seem to like it. In my opinion its a well-rounded pellet that provides them with most of what they need. I also will feed them chop (fruits, veggies, cooked legumes) and a healthy seed mix (Volkmanns). They also get Tropimix (another good variety pellet/veggie mix). As long as she gets her pellets and you try to get her to eat her veggies, that is fine. You could also try giving her cuttle bone (calcium for the eggs) or if she doesn't eat it, scrape some off into her food.

 

[Soyajam]

Agree, the pellets should be helping with most of the nutrition, but bump up the calcium (and maybe a bit of protein) for the egg production.

Beans are great for protein, as is quinoa and sprouts (sprouted beans/seeds)
As well as cuttle-bone, leafy greens and some veg are good for calcuim too.

Try mixing up the size of your fruit/veg when you offer it, either in really small (chop) size, diced, or even in giant chunks you can attach to your cage. Also try varying it cooked, mashed, or roasted. They can be picky about texture!

Good luck.

 

[bigfellasdad]

I gave enzo more egg and natural yoghurt when laying. My vet suggested a sun bulb to increase vitD which is required for the bird to absorb the calcium.

Good luck through the traumatic time, enzo was so hormonal she was hardly recognisable

 

[Teddscau]

I personally started feeding my kids chop last week. Here's the guideline I used: Making and Feeding ?Chop? mix to your bird

I'd recommend using a kitchen scale to have the measurement of each ingredient accurate to within a gram. Be very careful when including high oxalate foods such as dandelion, chickweed, chard, spinach, etc., as these ingredients, while healthy, significantly inhibit the absorption of calcium. Ran into trouble with too many oxalates this past summer (oops!).

I personally cut the ingredients by hand, as I find the food processor can end up cutting the pieces too small and can make the chop too wet. Also, I don't recommend freezing it, since most birds don't like frozen food (they're fine with frozen mash and birdie bread, though). Believe it or not, my birds actually ate up their daily portion of chop each day, which is surprising. When it comes to feeding birds, we tend to overestimate how much food they can eat in a day, so there's a lot of wastage and they end up eating mainly their favourite foods.

As for hours of darkness for Iggy, what...something about number of hours... I make sure my guys get 12 hours of complete darkness, and if they get hormonal, I give them 14 hours of darkness. I keep my birds in a mixed species indoor aviary, and pretty much all of them are paired off, yet I've only had one egg scare (that was back before I built the aviary). During the day, it should be nice and bright (you should have a regular light above their cages and a bird-appropriate UVA/UVB light. I'd recommend to Arcadia Flood Pro for birds), and their lights should be on a timer.

 

[Vilatus]

I personally started feeding my kids chop last week. Here's the guideline I used: Making and Feeding ?Chop? mix to your bird

I'd recommend using a kitchen scale to have the measurement of each ingredient accurate to within a gram. Be very careful when including high oxalate foods such as dandelion, chickweed, chard, spinach, etc., as these ingredients, while healthy, significantly inhibit the absorption of calcium. Ran into trouble with too many oxalates this past summer (oops!).

I personally cut the ingredients by hand, as I find the food processor can end up cutting the pieces too small and can make the chop too wet. Also, I don't recommend freezing it, since most birds don't like frozen food (they're fine with frozen mash and birdie bread, though). Believe it or not, my birds actually ate up their daily portion of chop each day, which is surprising. When it comes to feeding birds, we tend to overestimate how much food they can eat in a day, so there's a lot of wastage and they end up eating mainly their favourite foods.

As for hours of darkness for Iggy, what...something about number of hours... I make sure my guys get 12 hours of complete darkness, and if they get hormonal, I give them 14 hours of darkness. I keep my birds in a mixed species indoor aviary, and pretty much all of them are paired off, yet I've only had one egg scare (that was back before I built the aviary). During the day, it should be nice and bright (you should have a regular light above their cages and a bird-appropriate UVA/UVB light. I'd recommend to Arcadia Flood Pro for birds), and their lights should be on a timer.

I wrote all this down for future use, haha.

Do you have any ideas on how to get them to warm up to fresh fruits and veggies? I've wanted to do chop for a while, but they're fussy.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[Redsparrow]

I had a great experience with a new line of bird food I found on Amazon. It's called Dolly's Delights organic gourmet fruit and nut mix, and sprouting seed mix. My Amazon loves it and the stuff is organic. I recommend you try it

 

[Teddscau]

Honestly, the best way to get them to eat fruits and veggies is by eating said foods in front of them. Keep a small piece aside for them, while eating the rest, pretending it's absolutely delicious. Even if they go over to you and ask for some, play "keep away", and don't let them have it until they're almost begging. For added effect, accidentally "drop" a small piece on their play stand or whatever when you turn away for a moment, letting them think they're stealing your delicious food.

Most parrots live in flocks, so they learn through example. And, by you not giving them the food right away, it makes them want it even more, since obviously there's something really amazing about the food, otherwise you wouldn't be hogging it all. However, when introducing new foods using this method, only introduce one at a time, since they can easily become overwhelmed. Most likely, your birds don't understand that fruits and veggies are food. Further, the first few times they lick them or bite into them, they might be surprised by the taste or texture, and spit it out. They don't know what to expect from these strange foods, so you need to encourage them to try them.

Think about when you were growing up. You hated tons of foods, but slowly, as time went on and you were allowed to try things at your own pace (forcing your kid to eat things they hate just reinforces the negative association, so you want to try to make the food enticing so they'll willingly eat it), you developed a taste for them. I hated potato salad until a month ago. Until a few months ago, I didn't like mushrooms. A couple of years ago, I didn't like coleslaw or onions. It's not necessarily because the foods tasted bad, but because I wasn't used to the taste and/or texture, or I just never had it presented to me in the proper way.