Our Bird Food

These are pictures of what we feed our birds, in different seasons we feed differently. Fresh cut fruit everyday, and our home made birdie bread with more fruits, and vegetables. Kidney beans, peas, corn, carrots, apple sauce, canary seed, raisins, are some of our birds favorites, in our corn bread.

In winter time we believe a full bird is a much warmer bird. We feed walnuts, almonds, pecans, brazil nuts, filberts, boiled corn, and some peanuts, in addition to there regular diet. We do not feed this way in the summer it would not be healthy to do so in the heat. In summer we substitute orange juice for the milk in our birdie bread, orange juice is less likely to spoil or go rancid.

Our birds are fed a base diet with daily additional changes, they look forward to what has changed each day. Many relish their daily favorites, each bird has preferences, (likes and dislikes) some of our cockatoos love lemons. Our Lesser Sulfur Crested Cockatoo hen dislikes almonds while everyone else loves them, she is the only one not liking almonds out of our entire aviary. Our Blue & Gold Macaws eat just about anything, we make jokes about what could happen to the cat if they could get him! They are especially fascinated by the cat with a tail, since most of our other cats are "manx" (a type of cat born with little our no tail). I think they may have thoughts of twisting the furry tail and stringing a few beads on it, (ouch for the kitty) I've seen them weave beads on to small young willow branches, all the while watching the kitties tail.

Here are examples of what we feed when it is not so cold, picture on the right is an enlargement of picture on the left. You can see the muffin pieces, kidney beans, oranges, and "Fuji" apples (which flavor is very much like a pear and apple combination) they are a light pink and gold skinned apple, along with red peppers (a really good source of vitamin A). These peppers are also good for digestion and although they are hot for us, they are not so for your bird, and they love them. And sometimes I will add banana chips to this mix. In warmer weather we do not feed peanuts, walnuts, pecans, almonds, and a lot less corn, because these foods are to heavy for warm weather or a least in moderation.

I have one Goffin Cockatoo named "Fuji" whom loves to eat them, then initiate a kiss, knowing she will pepper you. She waits until you lick your lips, at that moment you are on fire and running for water. She sits there looking quite satisfied as if to say I got you!

I often wonder if this could be a secret to eating them, I never see them drinking or wetting their beaks while eating them.

This is golden spray millet, even many of our macaws eat this as well as our smaller birds. It is a favorite of all our cockatoos. Many of our birds being imports took a long time to try different types of food.

You just can't offer new foods a few times and come to the conclusion they don't like it, give a new food a real chance and be consistent.

Here are the two types of sun flower seed that we use in our mix. The darker of the two is jumbo stripe, and the other is a much more expensive and harder to get seed called California Gray stripe. We prefer the California Gray, but because few mixes can be found on the market that use this. That's why we use some of the darker stripe so it is not such a stressful transition for our birds to adapt to a new diet that most often doesn't contain the California Gray.

This to the far right is safflower seed it has less fat then sunflower, and is another one of our ingredients found in the seed we use. Sunflower and safflower both sprout well if done right. Which makes the sunflower much more nutritious than not sprouted.

Wheat, red proso, white proso, buckwheat, canary, oat groats, some pellets, rape seed, safflower, some seeds have color added (this color is made of safe vegetable die). This is the base mix we use for all birds, of course adding sunflower, birdie bread, and fruits, vegetables, etc., according to the type of bird we are feeding and what season we might be in.

We do give treats also that consist of oatmeal cookies, butter cookies, banana bread, popcorn, and table food. Our macaws love chicken, and will crack a leg bone for the marrow. I have one bird that will argue that be it a chicken drumstick to turkey drum stick, he's convinced that it must be "Popeyes Chicken."

Our view on pellets is as follows: Due to the fact you do not know how fresh the stuff in a pellet was to begin with, before it was heat processed, and was the vitamin content on the label researched before or after it was processed and heat pressed through the machine? Yes, they are less mess, yes, they are convenient, but so is fast food, which makes me wonder just how healthy are they? I can taste an orange and know if it's fresh or not, and I can crack a sunflower seed and know if it is rancid or not.

Just like medicine our Moms gave us and covered up the taste with sugar or corn syrup.

What is it that makes some pellets smell so good and look good? An artificial scent, artificial flavors, artificial color, and preservatives to keep all the artificial stuff smelling, tasting, and looking like fresh. I'm sorry but I prefer real food for myself, beside the fact I would not like to eat the same thing every day, how boring that would be for me. So how could I want any less for my pets.

Last but not least, years ago when I had horses. We were feeding mostly grain, sweet feed, and oats. I could always tell if it was fresh because of the taste of the molasses. But like everyone else I was told how great this new food (pellets) was so like everyone else I tried it. At first it was great and convenient, then the company got lax on there ingredients paid less wages to hire cheaper workers. Of course they did not put this on the label of there bag (a good product going bad). To make a long story short, horses were not up to par, and not just mine but all the ones on the same pellets I was using. It turns out a fungus that was undetectable to the naked eye had gotten into the pellets by way of some bad corn and careless handling. Well with all those preservatives we couldn't tell. But when one of the most expensive race horses of it's time around kicked the bucket some lab testing was done. Had we all been feeding grain we would have known (or at least those of us that paid close attention with our noses and taste buds). And most of the other horses recovered and that company is no more. A shame really, because at first there product did seem great, as great as they were advertising and saying. Some said there pellet company just got to big to fast for them to handle the volume of orders, unfortunately that happens a lot in life, to much that starts out good.

Animal anything is just not as tested as they should be, one thing that shocked me, was to find out that to be marketed for animals it only had to be proven that the product would not be harmful to the animal at the time. That means it doesn't even have to do what it is said it will or contain what they say it does, how unfounded is that label on the package? I always assumed there was testing on everything just like it is done for humans, "Wrong!" We test things on animals to make sure they are safe for humans, but when do we test to keep the animals from harm? I personally feel this should be corrected, after all are they not Gods creatures also? Helpless and depending on us to do the right things for them.

When I was little, a major soup company had a huge recall on some of there soups, they were processed soups that were convenient and fast for families and they tasted great, and were basically healthy not to compare to healthy fresh though. They were recalled by numbers on the cans, due to the preservatives and flavor enhancers you could not tell (salmonella) there was something wrong by taste. Well, there was a huge lawsuit and the problem was corrected, and as then, as it is today one of the most popular canned processed soups on the market once again. But this proves that you can not always detect freshness because of preservatives.

Some preservatives are considered natural, which means to you, if the package says all natural, "it does not mean NO PRESERVATIVES." I would rather see the preservatives listed, than to not know which of the so called natural preservatives I was eating.

I'm not saying all pellets are bad because I know of some birds that never would get a proper diet (fresh fruit, veggies, cooked food) in the homes and environment they are in, so anything would be better than just seed.

As I eat that occasional fast food burger, that who knows what is really in that, and I do eat that processed artificial cookie. I do also give pellets as snacks to my birds, as do I cookies, and other treats. But the pellets I give I always put a handful in my blender, and than check for metal particles that might have fallen off the machines cutters in the process of making them, using a magnet I can tell if there are metal fragments or not.

I know to be truly healthy though, "Nothing beats fresh for my birds or for myself!"

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