by Pajarita » Sat Dec 31, 2016 10:59 am
Let me give you a piece of advice that has helped me tremendously through the years in figuring out what is good and what is bad when it comes to parrots: DON'T TAKE ANYBODY'S WORD FOR ANYTHING! Always do your own research but 'good' research, not reading what somebody wrote or what somebody assures you it works. Go to scientific sources like studies, field biologists reports, etologists, etc. and, if you can't find a clear reply there, go to nature (especially when it comes to diet). People have the best of intentions giving advice but good intentions don't equal right information. Eggs is one of those things... We used to feed eggs to herbivore birds all the time and, unfortunately, there is lots of people who still do. We started doing it with canaries which were the very first domesticated species of bird kept as a pet. The reason was that, if we did not feed eggs, the birds would not breed right - we did not know the exact link between the eggs and the breeding, we just knew it worked. Of course, it meant that canaries were breeding great but it also meant that they died young - and that's why most people believe that canaries live around 7 to 9 years only when, in reality, they can live well into their teens without a problem (I had a hen that lived to be 18!). Now we know it was because eggs, being animal protein, contain vit D3 (which cannot be found in any vegetal source of food because it's made by the animal body) and, without vit D3, the birds could not absorb calcium. No calcium = soft eggs = no babies. But the same animal protein that gives them the vit D3 has, also, high fat and bad cholesterol, which herbivores cannot get rid of once they eat it because, as their natural diet (the one they evolved to thrive on) doesn't contain it (insect meat has virtually no fat and no bad cholesterol), nature did not give them the digestive mechanism to get rid of it. Birds that eat eggs (or any other animal protein) end up with fatty liver and high cholesterol. It doesn't happen overnight but, in time, it happens. Just as an FYI, in case you are wondering, wild birds make their own vit D3 when they are exposed to direct (not through a window) sunlight (good cholesterol changes to cholecalciferol -aka vit D3- through a chemical reaction it makes to the sun light).
So, whenever somebody (including me!) tells you that they do this or the other and it works for them, check it out on your own and make your own conclusions.