by Wolf » Fri Jul 29, 2016 7:17 am
I looked up the Beaphar bird food that you posted a picture of and there was no ingredient list for the food other than to say that it contained 26 varieties of seeds and egg food. So to tell you the truth I do not like this food, but then I want to know what is in the food that I give to my birds.
Many years ago, everyone fed their birds a seed based diet and because we did not know better their shortened life span was just accepted as part of having them. Then some vets got to doing a bit of research and came up with pellets which at the time were not much better as the birds were still dying from liver and heart disease at way too young of an age. After more research pellets were improved and then were touted as being a complete food and all you had to do was to feed their pellets. This also has proven to be wrong. Today, we know a lot more about the dietary requirements of our birds and todays pellets are much improved but we still have a long way to go. I don't care for all of the artificial ingredients, sweeteners, dyes and preservatives that are in most of the commercial foods both seed mixes and pellets, so I shop for my birds foods by the list of ingredients and not price.
It is best to do some research to find out what your species of parrot eats in its natural environment and since there is no way that we can duplicate this, it gives us a place to start in providing them with substitute foods that contain the same types of nutrients. There are parrots that are ground feeders and these parrots eat mostly seeds, other parrots are canopy feeders and many of them eat mostly fruits, their are parrots that eat a primarily liquid diet. This is why finding out what they eat in the wild provides just the starting point for proper nutrition for our birds, different species need different foods to remain happy, and healthy and to live a long life. Please take some time to read in the health, diet and nutrition section of the forum. There is a wealth of information there concerning proper diets and nutrition as well as a listing of foods that you can and should feed your bird and foods that you should not feed to them.
Although your bird will have foods that it likes and dislikes the primary reason why your bird is such a picky eater is that it was not taught that these other foods are indeed food. This is something that you have to teach it. While it is time consuming and can even be somewhat frustrating, it is really not that difficult to teach a bird to accept new foods as part of its diet.
With your latest post it does not appear that your bird is biting your Lady over being bonded and protective of you as it really sounds like it wants to spend time with her and wants her attention and is biting in an attempt to tell her to quit ignoring it. It appears that she has plenty of time to teach the bird to not bite her. My Senegal parrot, Kiki, is a very hands on bird and she likes a lot of personal attention in the form of head scratches and beak rubs. I did have to teach her to be gentle with her beaking and attempts to preen me. It was not that difficult to do, but it did take a little bit of time. I would reach over to her and scratch her head or rub her beak for a while when she asked. But sometimes she would bite me too hard if I quit doing this. When she did I would push her beak away and tell her " Be Gentle". It took s while for her to understand that the problem was that she was biting too hard and that it hurt, but once she understood this, she rarely bits me hard enough to hurt.