Correlation between sex of owner and food management (Poll)

[Margaret]

I'll grant you budgies and cockatiels are vastly different from most of the larger parrots when it comes to diet. I've witnessed first hand how a budgie would rather not eat than eat something that isn't seeds so I understand. Nonetheless food management can be used effectively with budgies even if it means pulling the food cup out of the cage 1-4 hours prior to taking it out. Do you still disagree with that?

Of course, because if you take food(I mean pellets) for 1-4 hours from budgies cage, then what's the point of doing that for a such short amount of time?

I'm not saying no to Cockatiels, because I simply don't know yet- so far I want her gain. If she will grow and let's say have tendency to obesity, then I'll be able to say that food management is necessary.

[Michael]

I think budgies are smaller and eat more frequently so the specific application of food management may be different but conceptually it's the same. This is why I try to use broader terms like food management because it leaves a lot of room for interpreting how it is applied in relevant situations. Food management for flight recall training is much different than food management to prevent obesity or reduce hormonal behavior. I guess it was just weird to make the poll a negative against free feed.

Asking are you against free feed would be preposterous because every now and then I free feed my birds as well. Asking users if they approve of free feed would be much the same point. So I guess I had to ask it as a positive question for food management and leaving the concept of food management very broad depending on the purpose and species.

[kaylayuh]

I'll grant you budgies and cockatiels are vastly different from most of the larger parrots when it comes to diet. I've witnessed first hand how a budgie would rather not eat than eat something that isn't seeds so I understand. Nonetheless food management can be used effectively with budgies even if it means pulling the food cup out of the cage 1-4 hours prior to taking it out. Do you still disagree with that?

I actually tried food management with the budgies for a few weeks with near disasterous results. Trying it again is strictly not an option for us because they will starve themselves. Doing so with Cheney Bird would be pointless as all birds have access to eachother's cages. I can't pull his food dishes and leave the budgies food dishes and expect him not to go in there to eat if he's hungry. The budgies also will only eat pellets if they're in Cheney Bird's cage.

[Margaret]

Talking about budgies and another birds.
It took me a long time, I don't want to lay but almost a year to put Mango and his gang from fat seeds to pellets and veggies etc. There was a moment that even our vet told me, that I'm doing it too fast and it may finish tragic in consequences. Mango was ok, I believe that he had hard time in the past, so he eat whatever, but Coconut reach the point that he was too skinny. Then even vet told me: slow, don't try to teach them eat pellets that fast. And again I had to add more seedss to mixture and all what they trow down(pellets) I packed for the wild birds outside. I really feed those wild birds a lot because of my budgies

[krokus]

I've been flying my macaws outdoors for over 10 years with no food deprivation. The relationship is more important than food. If I were to use food, they'd fly to the first stranger they saw with food in their hands and they probably would never go home with me.

Karen Pryor, author of "Don't Shoot the Dog" speculates about the use of food deprivation in her book.

"The theory is if an animal is working for positive reinforcement, the more it needs that reinforcer, the harder and more reliably it will work. Laboratory rats and pigeons are often conditioned with food reinforcers. To heighten their motivation, they are fed less food than they would eat on their own. It is customary to give them just enough to keep 85 percent of normal body weight. This is called food deprivation."

Deprivation has become such a standard technique in experimental psychology, she assumed it was probably a necessity in working with rats and pigeons. This deprivation was not used with dolphins, since dolphins that do not get enough to eat often become sick and die. She says that

"In those days she was using food and social reinforcers with ponies and children, quite successfully, without first having to reduce the baseline supply of love or nourishment to get results. Perhaps food deprivation was necessary with simpler organisms, such as rats and pigeons? Yet Sea Life Park trainers were shaping behavior with food reinforcers in pigs, chickens, penguins, even fish and octopi, and no one ever dreamed of making the poor things extra hungry first. Sea lions at Sea World worked for social and tactile reinforcers, as well as fish, and, of course, for conditioned reinforcers and on variable schedules as well. Consequently they did not have to be kept hungry in order to make them perform, during and after the day's performances, the sea lions could have all the fish they wanted. One result was, the sea lions were not snarly and crabby, as any hungry animal might be. They were friendlier to those humans they knew, and enjoyed being touched. Another result was that they grew larger, because they weren't stunted."

She suspects now that trying to increase motivation by using deprivation of any sort is not only unnecessary but deleterious.

"Reducing the normal levels of food, attention, company, or anything else a subject likes or needs before training begins-- and solely in order to make the reinforcer more powerful by making the subject more needful--is just a poor excuse for bad training. Maybe it has to be used in the laboratory, but in the real world it is good training that creates high motivation, not the other way around."

The very fact that some folks seem to need an added measure of control over their birds indicates to me that there is something missing between them and their birds: a bond, an element of sensitivity, trust, call it what you will. But these are the very people whose birds would be most at risk in a free flight program.

[captwest]

Ah, how refreshing, someone from my school of thought.

[jayebird]

Michael, if you're so very curious about the results, I assume you have some sort of hypothesis. What, pray tell, is the hypothesis you're looking to prove or investigate that relates to gender? Knowing your personality from your posts and the evangelist nature of your opinions I truly find it hard to believe that you're "really just curious" about the results without having an agenda to prove. I simply refuse to answer the poll based on the options separated by gender. I 100% agree with EntracedGCC about the implied nature of this poll.

I'm willing to bet no one (or almost no one) who voted against food management practices that in the human world. I bet most of the people here eat 2-4 meals daily (possibly with snacks in between) but that no one here is free feeding themselves with open food wherever they are all the time. When people are at work or at school they obviously don't have open food all the time. The school/employer "food manages" you by giving you a limited time breakfast/lunch/dinner break.

This is ridiculous. There's no comparison here. This is completely irrelevant and wrong. Again, I agree with Entranced. I'm a human and if I want to eat, I'm gonna eat, and it's likely not gonna take more than a couple steps for me to "forage" in my lunchbag or the pantry for a snack. Timed lunchbreak? Whatever, I keep powerbars at my desk.

But if we're going to go along with this weird and inaccurate analogy, then my bird does the same thing - he's got his foraging toys and his pellets bowl and when he wants a snack he's free to get it. DOESN'T MEAN THAT EITHER OF US ARE LITERALLY EATING 100% OF THE TIME - just when we're hungry every so often. And neither of us is overweight. I believe all humans deserve the right to food. And I'd like to think that my bird deserves no less than I: he deserves the RIGHT to eat when he's hungry.

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p.s. - krokus = right on

[Michael]

Michael, if you're so very curious about the results, I assume you have some sort of hypothesis. What, pray tell, is the hypothesis you're looking to prove or investigate that relates to gender? Knowing your personality from your posts and the evangelist nature of your opinions I truly find it hard to believe that you're "really just curious" about the results without having an agenda to prove. I simply refuse to answer the poll based on the options separated by gender. I 100% agree with EntracedGCC about the implied nature of this poll.

You seem way more presumptuous than I. I was just getting a lot of contradiction on another topic and it looked like it was only coming from women. If all you see is women around you, it's hard to tell if it's because there's a reason for it's just because there aren't any men in the room. It just looked like women passionately disagreed and I didn't hear much or anything from men. It could have been that they simply didn't care about the topic but after seeing the poll it just seems like they're not participating as much on the forum all together.

However, in my life I've seen far more women trying to force feed kids (or guests). On the other hand I see men take more of an approach of "if you don't want to eat, then don't." I'm not basing this on anything beyond what I think I've observed and I was curious if it correlates to how we feed parrots. The above reason is really what made me even think or question this at all but since it seemed like women were the ones talking so much against food management, I wondered if it had any correlation to what I have seen. No one has answered the other end of my question:

I would assume for most people it would also correlate to how they feel about feeding children but if you have a strongly divergent view between feeding children and pets, then you can mention what you think is different.

I have seen women hold a spoon and shove food in their kid's mouth (and I'm talking past the point when the child has clearly demonstrated the ability to feed itself). Honestly, don't ever recall seeing men do this. This forms my bias. However, it is possible that it is simply because men are not involved in their feeding all together and that is why they are not seen doing it. So I realize I'm hardly objective or well studied on this. But I don't believe I would force a child under my care to eat. The only time I went out of my way to get my parrots to eat is either when getting them to try a new food or during sickness/injury when extra effort/motivation helped them eat. Under normal healthy circumstances, I don't think it is necessary to force or encourage overeating.

I don't immediately have a study to quote but I remember learning in psychology classes that free fed animals in captivity tend to become overweight (both due to abundance of food and lack of exercise). It seems that the bodies are programmed to take advantage of food when it's available because in nature exists scarcity (and you better take in as much as you can when you have the opportunity) but a free fed animal is never compensated with scarcity to counterweigh the periods of overeating. When you add the lack of exercise by clipping, it really can become drastic. Not sure how it applies to smaller birds, but definitely know it can be an issue with Greys, Amazons, etc.

[kaylayuh]

If you're implying that women who free feed are forcing their parrots to overeat and become obese and unhealthy, I think that's ridiculous. My birds are free fed and they are routinely underweight. I took No Name to the vet last week and she was surprised how thin he is. He's 35g and according to her, that's below average. Pigpen is usually between 27 - 30g.

As for women forcing children or other people to eat, I don't think that's the norm either. Often women are taught that you offer food and drink to guests. It's part of being a good hostess. It's also quite impolite to refuse the food or drink when offered. If I'm having a guest over (which is rare), I always make sure to offer something to eat or drink, usually both. I've been known to offer something to maintanence people doing work in my apartment. As for children, I never force a child in my care to eat. Forcing or depriving food in humans creates a warped relationship with food and promotes the formation of eating disorders.. something I'm not keen to do.

[Michael]

I'm not implying that. But I'm asking if opinion on child feeding impacts opinion on bird feeding. If someone states that they would give snacks to kids between meals and would free feed parrots, that shows a similar line of thinking. But if someone says that kids should only be fed at meal times and never in between but supports always free feeding parrots, that would show a divergence in thoughts on feeding between species.

I'll come out and say that I believe specific feeding schedules benefit both parrots and children as well as their guardians. I believe food scheduling is a win/win for all