Diet Conversion Journey

[seagoatdeb]

i get Napoleons every once in a while and you can serve it sprouted, soaked or staight from the bag. i buy mine online in Canada but i am sure it is available many places including online in the USA

[Wolf]

I order both of the TOPS all in one seed mixes every now and then. Sometimes I feed it dry, sometimes I soak it and sometimes I use it in my gloop as a substitute for the whole grains. I really like it a lot, but it is so high priced that I can often find the same ingredients at the health food store for less money. If it were not so expensive I would use them all of the time.

[liz]

Mine don't eat much seed anymore. They fill up on breakfast and only nibble at supper. I will search for it.

[Wolf]

Not to advertise for any one company, but presently the best price I have found for these two Tops seed mixes is Windycity.com in Chicago. There are other places out there and I am always looking for better ingredients at lower prices and service is also very important to me especially due to this being online.

Since I mentioned Windy city, I may as well mention another US source that I normally like and have used a lot. That is Drs Foster and Smith in Missouri. I have cut back on using them although they were one of my main sources, because I have been having problems about them sending me notifications of the status of my orders. They used to notify me when they received my order, then when they packed it and then when it was shipped and the last few times they have done none of this and I have had to call them on the phone to find out about my orders. So I have started using them less often. It is a shame as I really did like them a lot.

Hey guys, since the exact rules concerning what is and is not advertising are pretty vague, mostly leaving it up to the moderator to decide and I have worked out a couple of guides that I use to determine what is and is not advertising, I would appreciate your feedback on this post. Do you consider it to be advertising or not? Please PM me with your answers because if the majority of you say that this should be considered as advertising I will delete it and then to make this thread maintain its integrity I would also have to delete your answers and while I don't mind removing my reply here I want to keep your answers for future reference. Thanks.

[beakycheekie]

Thanks everyone for your comments, I love hearing what others are doing for their flock. My guys were much happier this morning having the other seed mixed in with the Napoleon's. I guess a gradual addition is the way to go.
Wolf, I love the idea of getting ingredients from a health food store. I'm going to look into that. $25 for a small bag is going to add up quick

[beakycheekie]

I'm part of a parrot group on Facebook and someone asked a question about feeding their bird and specifically, what are a good brand of pellets? Lots of people commented with their suggestions of "such and such" brand pellets. I asked the person whether they had looked into doing chop or gloop in the morning and high quality seeds in the evening and said that was what I was looking into. I got on the page this morning and saw that my comment had been deleted. Why? Apparently you can only comment if you agree with feeding your bird pellets??

[Wolf]

Are you assuming that this is the reason or did they say something to give you this impression?

[beakycheekie]

I'm assuming. I asked why it had been deleted and received no response. I saw lots more comments from other people after I had posted mine and they were all talking about what kind of pellets they were feeding. I have heard that diet, like wing clipping, is a way to start a heated discussion/fist fight, lol. If that is why it was deleted I am really disappointed that we can't have discussions or make suggestions. I didn't realize we all had to think alike to make comments. Again, I'm just assuming but I don't know why else my comment was deleted.

[Pajarita]

This morning my elderly cockatiel had polished off his Napoleon's completely. The budgies were picking at it marginally but the two tiel girls had absolutely refused to touch it. I ended up mixing in some of the old seed mix with the new stuff.

Ok, great. Thank you Pajarita! That is some great info. I actually printed it out so that I could remember it all. How strict are you with the diet change progression? I know you used to have a rescue so I'm sure you got in birds all the time that were strays with unknown diet histories or that came from homes where they were fed cheap seed mixes. How did you get them eating such a good diet? What did you do if they refused the food?

I actually started with gloop in three stages: basic (grains and pulses, only), intermediate (with the 'favorite' veggies: corn, peas and carrots) and the advanced (with all the veggies in it) but I realized that it didn't really matter, at least in my case, because as I had all the birds cage-free, the new ones would imitate the old ones and start with the 'advanced' same as the basic. So, nowadays, whenever I get a new bird, I simply start it on the regular gloop but I add a bit of seed to it at the beginning. I still recommend the stages and to do it gradually to people with only one bird because, as they don't have other birds to teach them that gloop is good, it might take a little longer for them to start eating it.

I only had one single bird that took more than a few days to start eating it. It was a quaker and, after four weeks of quarantine she still had not started (she would wait all day long for the seed/nut dinner) but I felt so bad about keeping her caged all the time that I released her and just hoped for the best - and Lo and Behold! she started eating it the next day!

[Pajarita]

I'm assuming. I asked why it had been deleted and received no response. I saw lots more comments from other people after I had posted mine and they were all talking about what kind of pellets they were feeding. I have heard that diet, like wing clipping, is a way to start a heated discussion/fist fight, lol. If that is why it was deleted I am really disappointed that we can't have discussions or make suggestions. I didn't realize we all had to think alike to make comments. Again, I'm just assuming but I don't know why else my comment was deleted.

Most likely it was because the owner of the page does not agree with feeding anything but pellets. Of course, there could be another reason but the fact that the person did not reply to your inquiry is kind of telling, no? Single individuals usually prefer the preaching to the choir situation (it's human nature) and that's why, usually, in websites, the authority is split between moderators and administrators... but that is not what happens in Facebook (and one of the reasons why I don't like the bird pages there). Personally, I like discussions/debates. It makes you think about what your position really is in more detail than we normally do and forces you to not only do in-depth research but keep your arguments current. Preventing arguments from happening does keep the peace but it also impairs intellectual advancement -and it's kind of un-American, if you ask me