by Pajarita » Wed Oct 29, 2014 10:46 am
I am against using human calcium supplements with birds. It's not only that you have to guess the dosage and that's dangerous because too much kills just as well as too little, it's that avian calcium has the perfect balance between calcium, vit D3 (you can't get it from food, Lizz) and magnesium and, without this balance, you are dead in the water. I use a multivitamin/mineral powder supplement once a week (a dosage equivalent to 1.5 of what they recommend be given daily) to cover any lack in their diet and to supply vit D3 and cuttlebones all over the place but I give the laying hens extra dosages of Calciboost after they lay - as well as three times a year for everybody else (and, as a matter of fact, I am placing a Calciboost order from Amazon today because it's that time of the year). I also give them five days of Calciboost when I first get them but this only if they have been on a seed diet with no supplements (pellets have calcium and D3 so you have to be careful what and how much you supplement with them).
I would not recommend only supplementing when an avian vet prescribes it because, for one thing, they never do. In my personal experience and for what I have read written by other bid owners, their solution is always giving them a calcium injection and I avoid this as much as possible (injections in birds damage muscle tissue) and, for another, you would have to bring the bird to the vet three times a year to get an ionized calcium test and that can get pretty expensive over the years.