New baby questions

[Wolf]

You know, I have never really written out a recipe for my version of gloop. The major reason for this is that I change it around a little every now and again, so that my birds don't get too bored with the same old food everyday. I am certain that there are several posts from both myself and Pajarita that give a basic list of ingredients for gloop, along with a few variations on it, but I would have to look for them.
I feed them gloop in the mornings along with a fresh fruit and a couple of fresh vegetables and for their dinner I offer them a high quality seed mix. So regardless of which you choose, gloop or circus diet, I would offer them a small portion of their pellets for dinner. The seed mix that I feed and the pellets that you feed are both formulated to do exactly the same thing in their diets and are therefore interchangeable.
I will go over the circus diet in more depth sometime in the next few days , but I am thinking that it would be just as good of a choice as gloop. I will get back with you later, with my recommendation and/ or a recipe for gloop.

[Hookturn]

Thanks again to you and everyone else for all your help and advice!

[Pajarita]

Well, I guess the principle of the circus diet is the same as what we call gloop but other people call goop, mash, chop or kitchen sink but there are several important differences with mine.
1- I don't use any of the beans they use there, I only use small white beans because they happen to be the lowest in the bad lectin that all beans
2 -I most definitely do not use dry corn and would never recommend anybody feeding it to their parrots. It's the number one source of aflatoxin and although you kill the aspergillus that produced it when you cook it, you don't get rid of the aflatoxin already there, just stop the production of it.
3 - I also don't feed sprouts outside breeding season. In nature, sprouts are strictly breeding season food and pet birds don't need them all year round (these people are breeders and this diet is fed to their birds, not pets)
4 - My gloop has 50% veggies, not just 25% and they get their raw produce separately, a different one every day (they feed the same thing day in and day out)
5 - I feed fruity flavored one day and spicy the next, what they have is what I call the 'basic' recipe.

[Hookturn]

No sprouted seeds either? It seems like I've run across several sites and posts that claim sprouted seeds and beans are a great food source.

If you do 50% veggies, what should I use for the other 50%? Thanks for the input!

[Pajarita]

Yes, people usually think that, when it comes to birds nutrition, more is better but it's not. Birds in the wild do not eat a rich, abundant and perfectly balanced diet every day of their lives and it's always seasonal because everything in nature is as well -trees don't produce fruit or nuts all year round and seeds don't sprout all year round, either, and, during the bad weather season (could be winter or the rainy or dry one) birds go hungry every now and then so their eating a breeding diet all year round is not what nature intended for them.

My gloop has wheat kernels, kamut, hulled barley, oat groats, black lentils (but I used brown for many years), black japonica, Himalayan red and brown Basmati rice, and small white beans. I also add a bit of flax seed all year round and sesame and chia during breeding and molting season. This is combined with broccoli, blue kale, white hominy, sweet corn, peas, carrots, sweet potato, green beans and butternut squash (I buy all this in Whole Foods so it's organic, frozen and already chopped/diced except for the green beans which I chop myself). I always add an extra ingredient that varies according to what catches my fancy or is on sale at the time, this can be palm hearts, artichoke hearts, beets, etc.