From: roberts@studguppy.lanl.gov (Doug Roberts)
Subject: Re: Bird food recommendations for an amazon sought.
Organization: Technology Modeling and Analysis, LANL-A7
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 17:47:35 GMT


In article <BsMrJw.FMM@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> mike@crg4.uwaterloo.ca (Mike Aksmanovic) writes:

> Hi,
> 
> My amazon's diet currently consists of a seed mix, vitamin
> supplements in her water and fruits and veggies.  I'm looking for
> recommendations for (or against) pelleted bird food for her. I'd like
> something which is nutritionally complete, since I'd really like to
> get away from the vitamin supplements she's getting right now.
> 
> Thanks,
> 	Mike Aksmanovic - mike@crg4.uwaterloo.ca

In general, watch the fat and salt content of what you give your
birds. A common ailment seen in pet parrots is liver disease caused by
a diet too-high in fats. After we almost lost our Sever Macaw, Maggie,
to liver disease we had to be extremely careful with her diet to
ensure that she didn't get anything fatty. This caused me to become
aware of not only what I had been giving all our birds, but also what
I eat.  For example, the Quaker Oats granola that I had been sharing
with our birds in the morning at breakfast is **25% fat**!!. I stopped
eating it, and I also stopped giving it to the birds. A pure seed diet
is far too high in fat content to maintain a healthy parrot, as well
as being nutritionally incomplete.

Specific foods _not_ to feed any parrot: chocolate, caffein-bearing
foods, avocado, fresh tomato, and cabbage family vegetables. All of
these have been shown to either be toxic to parrots or to cause them
gastric distress.

At the recommendation of our avian vet, we have weaned all of our
birds (3 Amazons, two Cockatoos, one Macaw) off of seed almost
completely.  Instead, their primary diet is Harrison's pellets.
Harrison's pellets are nutritionally complete, and there is a small
amount of seen in the pellets. This diet is supplemented with the
following:

	fruits: (grapes, apples, orange slices, banana slices, 
		papaya & papaya seeds [BirdTalk recommended papaya
		seeds, and they all love them], etc.)

	veggies: (baked potato, sweet potato, brocolli, snap peas, 
		 green beans, fresh cerrano & jalapeno chilis, 
		 beans [pinto, lima, northern, lentel, red: cooked, no
		 salt], celery [they love the crunch], carrots.

	protein: a small piece of low-fat chicken meat now and then, a
		chicken drumstick or thigh bone now & then (they _love_ to
		crack the bone and get at the marrow), a tiny peice of
		lean steak now & then.

	treats: popcorn (plain, no butter or salt, popped in the
		microwave), a piece of Health Valley brand low-fat
		granola bar [Maggie will kill for this], fresh
		cherries, with the pits removed [the pits contain
		small amounts of cyanide, as do peach pits, apricot
		pits, and apple seeds], cantalope, honydew, mango 
		slices, low-fat cereals [less than 5% fat] such as
		fruit-filled spoon-sized Shredded Wheat [they all 
		love this], Wheat Checks, Rice Checks, Crispex, etc.

Things I no longer give my birds (and also things that I have cut back
on, myself): potato chips (33% fat, high salt), cookies (usually high fat),
fritos, & most other junk foods.

Well, enough diet-tribing for now :-}

--Doug
--

==================================================================
Douglas Roberts                |
Los Alamos National Laboratory | All good work is done in defiance
dzzr@lanl.gov                  |  of management. -- Bob Woodward
(505)667-4569                  |
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From: billg@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM (Bill Gingras)
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 19:52:02 GMT
Subject: 'tiels that go POP
Organization: HP Stanford Park - Palo Alto, CA