Stitch attacking Leroy

[Wolf]

I just have an aversion to waste.

[cml]

I may have a program to analyze nutritional value of different food, come to think of it. It's a professional tool for dietists etc. Is there something you want to check specifically wolf?

PM your recipe (in grams) and i'll give it a go this weekend if you want?

[Wolf]

Try it out on the foods that you are feeding your birds and see what it says. It isn't too hard to work out the vitamins/ minerals, essential amino acids, carbs, fats, proteins, and fiber but it is hard to come up with a reasonably accurate figure for how much is in them so that you can sit down and work out a few variations on home cooked foods for birds. This is the biggest drawback to this way of feeding them, because without this data you must count on variety to provide enough of these things and it is easy to provide too little or too much of any one of them. That is what I am working on.
I don't want to make it and have it analyzed, tweek it and re analyze it and so on, I want to be able to work it out before I go to the grocery store. I want to be able to honestly and fairly accurately say to those looking to improve their birds diet you might want to add this much of this food to their diet because their current diet is lacking in _____, and has too much___.

[Pajarita]

Wolf, I see where you are coming from but, in truth, it's not necessary. Birds don't eat a balanced meal every single day of the week... one day they will eat figs all day long and the next they will eat just corn, etc Nature did not evolved them to get perfect daily nutrition, she evolved them to be seasonal feeders and for all of it to work out in the end (to the point that, for some birds, it's 90% of one thing one season and 90% of another the next). It's the same thing with the genders of the babies in a single clutch, it's usually not balanced but, at the end of the season, if you did everything right, you will end up with a 50/50 ratio. It's only recently that we have come up with the strange notion that a diet needs to be perfectly balanced every single meal, this is not found in nature, not even among humans!

So, as long as you can get the birds to eat a fairly good variety of produce and pick the veggies and fruits of different colors every day (like, for example, blueberries and yellow zucchini, grapes and carrots, red peppers and celery, spaghetti squash and kiwis), it works out well in the end. With parrots, the big concern is protein, fat, the right kind of fiber and moisture content and, when you feed cooked whole grains and pulses you are offering a good level of protein, excellent fiber and the right moisture with no fat (which is later provided by the seed dinner) so you are OK.

[Wolf]

Since I have spent many years of living off the land ie hunting, fishing, gathering whatever I could find growing in season I am well aware of the way that birds eat and that means both the good and the bad of it ,although I am sure that they are much better at it than I am. I am aware of the times of mal nutrition due too an abundance of certain foods as well as from the lean times.
I am also aware of the fact that even if you formulate with 90% accuracy you will in the end only be right at the most 60% of the time, when confronted with their needs during different stages in their development as well as the differences due to their needs during the differing cycles in their lives each year.
Much of the foods that we give them have these inhibitors such as oxalates and others right along with the good things that they need. I just think that we could do better in our choices of what to include and when than we currently do. Variety is not always the answer because it depends on the nutrients that are involved both of the good and bad types and what their balance is. If you truly believed that it wouldn't matter then you would not be giving the advice that you do on nutrition. We only differ in our view of how much we should be able to do on a consistent basis, I think.

[Pajarita]

Hmmmm, maybe I am misunderstanding you but, in my opinion, a large variety does take care of all nutritional needs in the long run.

[Michael]

Just saw this topic, sorry I don't have time to go through it all and the responses but I just wanted to mention a few things about birds that get along and then don't. I've had Kili and Truman together about 5 years now and lately they usually get along decently but sometimes have those kinds of bursts of fighting. So given birds that normally tolerate each other but sometimes don't, here are some things to try.

Training is a big part of it. Get the birds to be focused on you and tasks rather than each other. If it's not working, tweak food management to gain the motivation necessary to return focus to tasks rather than fighting. Keep the birds out long enough to do stuff but short enough not to have a chance to fight.

Sometimes it's a hormonal or dispute sort of thing. Sometimes it just takes a little time. I'm sure your birds are caged in proximity of each other as are mine. It's possible that they bottle up frustration to toward their neighbors while in, so the moment they get out they want to fight. Try splitting them up for a little bit. Alternate sticking them in a carrier in another room or having them hang out with you one at a time. Eventually you want to resume normal together stuff but try giving things a few days or weeks for the unknown condition to subside.

You can spend your whole life trying to guess what sets them off. You can speculate but unless there is a glaring reason, you usually won't find the real cause. It is better to deal with the behavior in ways that work than making up reasons because it feels nice to know the answer.

My birds have a much worse relationship with each other than yours and sometimes bursts like that seem to be out of nowhere. It's just about knowing how to deal with it and to get the birds focused on other things.

[Wolf]

Excellent point, Michael. Thank you.

[cml]

Thanks Michael!

[cml]

I don't want to make it and have it analyzed, tweek it and re analyze it and so on, I want to be able to work it out before I go to the grocery store. I want to be able to honestly and fairly accurately say to those looking to improve their birds diet you might want to add this much of this food to their diet because their current diet is lacking in _____, and has too much___.

I tried it with Pajarita's recipe for gloop, but with made up weights. With everything weighed, I now have an excelchart for her recipe that will give you most nutrional info.
See results attached, Ive copied the results part from the chart, since everything wont fit here.