Hello from North Texas

[modifieddesign]

Congratulations! In my opinion the Meyer's parrot is the most beautiful of all the African parrots coupled with a great and gentle disposition. A very good choice of species, I would add. There is a wealth of information on this blog. Don't hesitate to ask questions and learn all that you can. Enjoy your new found family member.

Jeff

Thanks! I did a lot of online research before I picked this species. So far everything I read seems true. I'm very happy with her.

[ninaroo1216]

Why is spinach bad? I guess it's a plus she didn't eat it. I had read it on the acceptable list on a website so I gave it a shot.

What greens are better for them?

Thanks

I just read something about spinach the other day, how one of the chemicals in it leaches calcium or some such <---- do not quote me, I'm now trying to find the article!
We feed bok choy, kale, broccoli, carrot, peas (usually snow peas, gives them something to play with) a variety of peppers along with cooked grains. I'm always mixing up the veggies(they do get spinach once a week or so), all of our birds love a bit of cooked sweet potato. Fruit is only given every other day, all kinds of berries, melons, apples, mango.
My crimson bellied conure, Gossamer, will ask for bites of salad LOL, she just sits there with her beak open waiting.
If the birds hear the air popper, they start calling as loudly as their little bodies can manage, they LOVE popcorn as a treat.

[modifieddesign]

I just read something about spinach the other day, how one of the chemicals in it leaches calcium or some such <---- do not quote me, I'm now trying to find the article!
We feed bok choy, kale, broccoli, carrot, peas (usually snow peas, gives them something to play with) a variety of peppers along with cooked grains. I'm always mixing up the veggies(they do get spinach once a week or so), all of our birds love a bit of cooked sweet potato. Fruit is only given every other day, all kinds of berries, melons, apples, mango.
My crimson bellied conure, Gossamer, will ask for bites of salad LOL, she just sits there with her beak open waiting.
If the birds hear the air popper, they start calling as loudly as their little bodies can manage, they LOVE popcorn as a treat.

Most of that we keep around, never had Bok Choy in the house though. I'll buy some soon. Thanks for the info.

[liz]

Why is spinach bad? I guess it's a plus she didn't eat it. I had read it on the acceptable list on a website so I gave it a shot.

What greens are better for them?

Thanks

I just read something about spinach the other day, how one of the chemicals in it leaches calcium or some such <---- do not quote me, I'm now trying to find the article!
We feed bok choy, kale, broccoli, carrot, peas (usually snow peas, gives them something to play with) a variety of peppers along with cooked grains. I'm always mixing up the veggies(they do get spinach once a week or so), all of our birds love a bit of cooked sweet potato. Fruit is only given every other day, all kinds of berries, melons, apples, mango.
My crimson bellied conure, Gossamer, will ask for bites of salad LOL, she just sits there with her beak open waiting.
If the birds hear the air popper, they start calling as loudly as their little bodies can manage, they LOVE popcorn as a treat.

Myrtle has claimed the far end of the table. She wants donations to her plate from everyone.

[Wolf]

ninaroo is right there are two issues with spinach, the first is the iron content is too high and the second is that it is also high in oxalic acid which blocks calcium absorption. This can cause seizures in birds. Now this doesn't mean that all spinach is bad because that is not true, Just like seeds, up to a point they are great for the bird to eat, there is only a problem when they get too much of it.
Here is a pretty basic article on bird nutrition that I thought that you might enjoy.
http://beautyofbirds.com/birdnutrition.html
I also have saved another article that I think that everyone might like, it is about a source of food that parrots in the wild normally eat, but most people don't usually even consider as food, flowers. http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww38eii.htm

[modifieddesign]

ninaroo is right there are two issues with spinach, the first is the iron content is too high and the second is that it is also high in oxalic acid which blocks calcium absorption. This can cause seizures in birds. Now this doesn't mean that all spinach is bad because that is not true, Just like seeds, up to a point they are great for the bird to eat, there is only a problem when they get too much of it.
Here is a pretty basic article on bird nutrition that I thought that you might enjoy.
http://beautyofbirds.com/birdnutrition.html
I also have saved another article that I think that everyone might like, it is about a source of food that parrots in the wild normally eat, but most people don't usually even consider as food, flowers. http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww38eii.htm

Thanks for the links, both were good reads.

So what is with the massive rift in opinion with pellets? My vet and lots of other sources have recommended Roudybush. Which worked great for my Golden Capped Conure. Of course still with fresh food daily. But some say no pellets, or hardly any pellets. I guess the part I'm wondering about is that I see healthy birds on both side of the argument.

[liz]

As far as I can tell, seed is like the desert at the end of the day. Mine eat so much grain and veggies that they eat very little seed.

[Wolf]

There are several issues with pellets when it comes to birds, the first is the dryness which is drawn from the birds body to make the pellets digestible. A bird primarily drinks twice a day both times usually just after eating, but birds get a fair amount of their water from their food so this is reversed when they are fed pellets and sometimes causes a mild dehydration to occur in the birds body.
Soy beans and soy products, these are a cheap form of protein that feed companies like to use and in some birds causes an allergic reaction which can cause feather plucking and self mutilation.
Artificial preservatives, dyes and sugars which can have a variety of bad effects on the bird and the sugar content has been known to contribute to diabetes in birds.
The processes used to make the actual pellet destroys many vitamins and minerals due mostly to the heat so the feed companies spray them with artificial vitamins and minerals which are not readily digestible to many birds.
The only studies that have been done on pellets were short term studies of less than a year in duration to determine the benefits of the pellets. The pellets are all based of a formulation for cockatiels and that is the only parrot that was used in the short term studies.
These are the basic arguments against the use of pellets as a base for their diets. Most vets only recommend them because a lot of people who have birds would not make the effort to provide any form of balanced nutrition for their birds were it not for pellets. Other than that I have never read anything that shows any advantage to feeding pellets to my birds. Diet and nutrition is one area that while, I admit to not knowing enough about is an area that I spend a lot of time researching.
Unfortunately the effects of poor nutrition does not show up quickly and may take years to show up and in many cases by then the damage is done. In some cases the effects of a poor diet can be reversed and in some they can not be reversed and prove to be fatal. Consider kidney, liver and heart disease in birds are primarily caused by poor nutrition and of these only the liver disease might be reversible to a large degree but not totally.
There is a lot more to be learned about avian nutrition than what we currently know as very few studies have been done on their diets in the wild or in captivity and all of these are less than 20 years old. Before the studies using a pellet formulation for cockatiels and done with cockatiels all of the avian nutrition was based on chickens.
I am including some links that I hope you will find useful, I don't agree with everything in all of these but I am not trying to convince you of anything, I am just interested in you being able to make informed choices of your own.
http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww72eiii.htm
http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww59eii.htm
http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww47e.htm
http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww47eii.htm
http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww3eiii.htm
These represent just a small portion of the things that I have found and saved these links on my computer for the purpose of sharing, I hope you find them useful.

[modifieddesign]

Thanks for the links. After reading them I'm still a bit perplexed. From what I read, to sum it up in the shortest way possible I feel like it said "No one, not even scientist, truly know what a parrot needs in its diet. Here is what I assume they should have."

So it's confusing. I feel like every keeper and every breeder have a different opinion on the subject. Most admit no one knows. And if no one knows how is anyone right?

As for the pellet diet, are there any examples of parrots dying from Roudybush or similar "quality" pellets? I'm really asking. No sarcasm. I mean I'm sure there are brands that have hurt birds. But Roudybush seems to hold this holy grail of pellets reputation as far as non organic pellets go. Has any necropsy shown that a bird died from consuming Roudybush? Or was less healthy?

I guess my main concern is providing enough vitamins with a fresh only diet. On the other hand I, and apparently no one else, know for a fact what should be provided. The whole thing makes it hard to pick a side for me. It seems no matter what it's all opinion based. Which is scary because it means no matter what side I choose it may be wrong.

I need to read up more on the Meyer's natural diet. Or as much as is known at least. It's all a lot to take in.

[Pajarita]

Well, we do know what they eat in the wild but we can't duplicate it, especially since all birds are seasonal eaters so they eat one thing in June and a completely different thing in December, for example. And, even if we took the time to learn for a fact what the exact nutritional composition of their different diets are, captive birds have different needs than wild birds so, even though it would give us a good starting point, we could not really use the data for captive birds. Then add to that the fact that captive-bred birds are nothing but a poor copy of the wild specimen, weaker and less healthy than the wild birds (no natural selection) and you have practically apples and oranges. But there are things that remain the same because the digestive system of captive birds works the same way than the wild ones. And so we know that they are herbivores and not omnivores as most people believe, that their diet has a moisture content of 85-95%, that they eat less protein during the resting season than during the breeding one and that not all protein is the same with some been of higher quality than others, that they need lots of the right kind of fiber (this is another problem with pellets), fat content varies by species with the macaws requiring more than others, same with protein, some species can stand more (grays and sennies, for example) while others need less (amazons and conures, for example), etc. And we know that some species don't really eat fruits (like cockatiels) while others eat A LOT of it (GCCs, lories, etc). We do know a lot, it's just a matter of putting together a diet that works for your bird.

Now, as to spinach, I never feed it to my birds, same as parsley, collard greens and beet greens. Too high in oxalic acid and too easy to replace with other nutritious greens for me to consider them (I try to make my life easy if I can). I feed all three types of kale, mostly romaine lettuce but also Boston, escarole, chicory, dandelion greens, celery greens as well as all three types of Swiss chard, cabbages like green, red, savoy, nappa, bok choy. I also feed arugula, radicchio, endive but only once in a blue moon because arugula is too high in iron (birds don't need a lot of it and, if you feed too much, it gets stored in the liver which is bad for them), endive is too expensive (I have a lot of birds) and the birds are not really that fond of radicchio. They also get some fennel tops every now and then (they do like those as well as the root).

Pellets are a hot topic. Personally, the way I look at it, they are too dry (max 10% which is way too low for an animal that eats an average of 90% moisture and it's not hard-wired for frequent drinking), they don't offer complete nutrition (no phytonutrients- so I still have to offer food prepared by me), I don't like not knowing how much protein I am feeding (I have birds that have liver and kidney issues) and, unless you buy Tops, you are not feeding human grade ingredients (and I worked in the grain industry for 10 years and I know there is a difference) so the only thing I could use them for is to substitute for seeds and they are too expensive for that plus the birds love seed while you have to train a bird to eat pellets. So, where is the actual benefit? People usually feed them because that is what avian vets normally recommend but three of them have admitted to me that they know they are not the best option and that they recommend them because, and I am quoting one of them, they are the 'lesser evil" as they don't trust people to feed their birds right. But I think that is an antiquated concept because parrot keepers nowadays don't just fill up a bowl with either seeds or pellets, they do feed veggies, fruits, greens, sprouts, cooked whole grains, etc.

Do pellets kill birds? I think they do in the long term but you will never find a single vet that could say this from a necropsy because the actual causes of death are failure of internal organs. It's like drinking alcohol, it destroys the liver but the cause of death is not alcoholism but hepatic failure from cirrhosis, right? With humans and animals that have been domesticated for thousands of years like dogs, cats, horses, etc. we do have long term dietary studies but there are none with parrots. They are a fairly recent fad (not more than 20 years or so) and so we have no long term studies on anything but we do know of birds that have died from hepatic lipidosis, eggbinding, renal failure, etc that ate only pellets the same way that we know of birds that have died of the same problems eating only seeds. The key is to not use them as complete nutrition and only as a measured source of protein but that goes for seeds, too, and they are not only cheaper, the birds love them while you need to train a parrot to eat pellets which are also more expensive so why bother?

I feed gloop with raw produce (a different veggie, fruit and green every day) for breakfast and all day picking and a measured portion of a good quality seed mix and nuts for dinner. I've been doing this for 20 years and my birds all do very well on it so I am satisfied and the birds are happy.