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Nutritionally Balanced Diet for Your Bird
By
Gudrun Maybaum (May 29, 2000)
Bird Nutrition and Herb Consultant
In the last few years we have heard the term “abundance feeding” a lot. What exactly does that mean? Some people actually think it means to give their birds a lot of whatever they feed them. That can lead to lack of nutrition. About 70% of all parrots have a lack of vitamin A and 50% of all parrots still die of malnutrition. If you give your bird a nice mixture of nuts, seeds or fruits it will pick out its most favorite one and the rest ends up on the floor of the cage.
Feeding them one kind of seed, nut, fruit, vegetable etc. per day not only gets them to eat most of it without carpeting the cage floor with it, but it is most likely closer to the way they eat in nature. Abundance feeding is just an abundance in variety, not in quantity.
So then how does abundance feeding work if we are supposed to feed them a great variety but only one kind at a time? Every day or every few days something different. And as much as possible should be organically grown. Their little, fast working systems have a hard time with chemicals that are often found in foods (and in pellets).
Now there are the specialists that say our birds need the flinging for fun. Don’t worry even with one kind of seed or nut they will have fun and still create enough of a mess. And oh, boy, if some of them eat a piece of fruit – if that is not fun/messy I don’t know what is!
A seed only diet will eventually led to lack of nutrition. Pellets only are not a good solution either. Unfortunately most of the pellets have ingredients like sugar (is your bird hyper?), artificial preservatives (influence the central nervous system), artificial colors, or preservatives. But even without all of this, pellets are a processed food that if fed exclusively over a length of time causes kidney problems.
I feed my birds the ‘Original Beak Treat Mix’ with organic raw chopped vegetables in the morning (they love warm food). This recipe was originally developed to get seed junkies to eat their vegetables. The late afternoon or evening is goody time with fruits, nuts or seeds. (I admit that I most often use a basic seed mix.) Sometimes I find good buys on individual fruits by the box. That means my birds get the same fruit for a few days in a row. So far they never thrown it back at me and told me that it was too boring. I really believe that if they find something in nature they will go back to the source until it is gone. My birds also always have a bowl of pellets, which they think are there to be turned onto powder.
©Copyright Reserved. Reprinted with Kind permission from Gudrun Maybaum - Bird Nutrition and Herb Consultant
