feeding the land mammals

[JessiMuse]

So I prepare the vegetables for the birds, and I put Lucy's on the table like usual. It's not much. Broccoli, carrot, romaine and spinach (and kale when we have it). It might not have everything she needs nutritionally right now, but I'm trying to introduce her to more things.

Anyway, Lucy loves too eat on the table, so I put her veggies on the the table. She doesn't only love eating them, but she loves making a mess of them. I usually serve them on a paper towel or a plastic jar lid, and it always ends up being all over the table. She also has a habit of dropping things from high places, so you can imagine what I have to do to just keep the food on the table for her.

Anyways, I get Lucy out of the cage, and onto the table. She goes straight for the broccoli, which is her favorite food to shred. But she doesn't start eating of shredding it. Instead, what she does is pick it up, carry it to the edge of the table, and drop it. Before I could react, the dog was there, ready to catch it and eat it up.

The dog always waits on the birds to drop things, because he knows how messy they are. I sometimes see him sitting at my pionus Dudley's cage, waiting him to drop something.

It reminds me of something Pajarita said when I made a similar topic not too long after I joined this forum.

throwing food down is a hard-wired behavior common to parrots. It's a function of their ecological niche used to disperse seed and feed ground species - nature is a very thrifty master and creates wonderful symbiotic relationships by establishing behaviors that benefit more than just one species.

Ever since then, I've called my bird's tendencies to just drop things out of their cages, off the table, etc. "feeding the land mammals". Although Lucy also tends to drop things she plays with, and looks right at me, expecting me to pick it up. I sometimes wonder if my birds do these things for the sole purpose of driving me insane.

[Wolf]

I tend to think of it as playing with you, although I can't say for sure that the toy is the toy that the bird is playing with. It was through this very tendency to throw things on the floor that got Kookooloo, CAG, and myself to tossing a ball back and forth.

[JessiMuse]

Yeah, I think she's playing, too. To Lucy, the world is her toy (literally). And when you have a bird that thinks everything is a toy meant for her to play with, then you have a bird that will get jealous when you have something she doesn't. So in result, Lucy makes doing things like working on a laptop of tablet a little difficult.

In all seriousness though, I'm pretty sure just about all my birds are in cahoots with the dog. I'm pretty sure Joey (diamond dove) and my finches don't drop the food on purpose, but I've at least seen Dudley actually aim it at the dog, and Lucy conveniently dropped the broccoli right in front of the dog. Good to know they're ok with him hanging around, I guess.

[Wolf]

All of my parrots like feeding the dos and cats, too. I must admit that it is a pretty good way of telling them that they will get more food over time than they would ever get by eating the bird.

[Pajarita]

Pretty Bird, my first rescue (and which I used to feed crap all the time) used to wait for the dogs to sit under her cage before she would start throwing peanuts down to them -which they loved because they had learned to chew on the shells to open them up so they could eat the 'nuts' inside. I would find a circle of peanut shells on the floor all around her cage

Please, don't give Lucy spinach very often -not more than once a month- it's too high in oxalates and iron for them.

[JessiMuse]

Alright, I'll stop with the spinnach for a while. Thanks Paj.
Any suggestions on what I can feed her? Trying to add more variety in her diet, but so far regarding fruits and veggies, she won't try it unless it's green (with the exception of carrots). She's so weird.

That is true, wolf. I think that's why my dog hasn't tried to get her yet. He's kind of afraid of them too, and Lucy definitely knows this.
One time, I got fed up with Lucy trying to "help" me when I was working on my laptop, so I put her on the coffee table to play with some bird toys I had there for her. Well, apparently playing with toys isn't nearly as fun as playing with mommy's laptop, but flying over a 2-feet gap is too much work. Meanwhile, the dog was standing right there in between the couch and table, so what does Lucy do? She jumps off the table and lands on the dog's back. Scared the dog silly, but I got Lucy off of him before anything happened.
Coincidentally, Alex did something similar, but the dog was laying down. They both seem to have a thing with bossing the dog around.

Lucy did the same thing today, with several carrot pieces. I noticed that when she does this, she takes one bite out of the pieces, and then when she drops them, she watches the dog eat. I really wonder what she's thinking when she does this.

[Wolf]

Most of the time, it seems, that we miss the window of opportunity when it comes to teaching our birds to eat a good and varied diet and of course the breeders aren't going to take advantage of it either. This is just flat wrong because although we can't teach them all of the foods that are good to eat during this time, it also has the effect of making them more open to trying other foods as they grow older. At least that is my opinion.

My birds love to play feed the doggie( or kitty), I know that a big reason for this id due to the dogs reaction to the bird throwing out the food. Initially I really don't think that the parrot has any thoughts about this as they are just eating the way the evolved to eat in the wild where it is very common for them to take only one or two bites of any food, throw it down and move on to the next piece of food. But once they start getting the reaction from the dog or cat they are hooked and some will try to feed their entire meal to the dog or cat, so you need to watch them if they do this.

One of the biggest dangers to a parrot as far as dogs and cats are concerned is that although these are predators, the parrot has little to no fear of them. This, I believe, is due to the fact that for most parrots there are no dogs and cats in their natural habitat so they don't perceive them actually as predators, and for captive bred and raised parrots, they are often raised around dogs and cats and are generally protected from them which seems to me to only strengthen the idea in the parrot that dogs and cats are not really predators and nothing to fear... until it is too late.

[Pajarita]

Cockatiels love all kinds of greens. They are partial ground feeders and granivores so they derive most of their nutrition needs from greens and not from fruits. You can give her all kinds of lettuces (iceberg or head lettuce is not as nutritious as other kinds but every now and then would be OK, I guess -I never buy it because it doesn't agree with me and we don't really like it), escarole, chicory, bok choy, broccoli, broccoli-rabe, red and green Swiss chard (not too often, it's also high in oxalates -they LOVE the red Swiss chard though!), endives, dandelion greens (same thing, too high in oxalates so not very often) and all the cabbages -savoy, green, red and nappa.

[JessiMuse]

The birds are always where I can get to them if the dog is nearby. I'm extra careful when it comes to letting them be with the dog, because while my dog is a mixed breed, he is mainly a terrier (and the vet said that there's possibility of poodle). Terriers have been bred to hunt vermin such as mice, so he has a pretty high prey drive for anything that moves quickly. He'll run after the birds when they fly, but he'll stop if I call him. I'm still afraid for if one day, he doesn't stop. He's well trained to some extant, but there's a lot I still have to work on, with him.

Thanks Paj. I'll keep that in mind.

Actually Wolf, Lucy's breeder has fed her birds quite the variety, so she's pretty good about eating a lot of vegetables. It's just a matter of giving her things that doesn't quite look like food to her (aka things that aren't green). Still, she's better about trying new things than birds I've had before (definitely better about it than Dudley), so it usually takes as much as me eating it myself for her to try it, since she loves to try and steal my food.
I didn't look into Lucy's background until after I got her, but I can say I lucked out when I ran into a breeder that took the time to expose all of her birds to a variety of healthy foods. Definitely makes my life easier.

I do know that they're ground foragers and granivores, so I try to at least simulate a wild diet. Seeds and low growing plants is what they commonly eat in the wild, so I was thinking of possibly putting together my own seed/grain mix that would be healthier than store-bought mixes... I'm still doing research for ingredients.


Would it be ok to harvest dandelion greens in the yard on occasion? We get them somewhat often, and we don't use pesticides or anything on the plants.

How is kale with iron and oxalates? I know it's a pretty dark leafy green, so I expect it to be pretty high in it, just like a lot of other dark-colored leafy-greens.

Also, where do you guys stand on eucalyptus "gum nut" berries? Poisonous? Not poisonous? Healthy? Not healthy? Friend of mine has a tree in her front yard, and I was wondering, since cockatiels are native to Australia and all, if it might be something they'd eat.

And speaking of red Swiss chard, the breeder showed me this picture of Lucy's mother, named Shodu.

Since we're both members of another bird forum, she used this plus another picture of her eating them for an art/photoshop contest.
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j24/c ... dm0mrn.jpg
So I always like to joke that Lucy is part velociraptor.

[marie83]

Dandelion leaves and the flowers too are ok for birds. Mine love them. Not sure about nutritional content though so they don't get them too often.