Diet Conversion Journey

[seagoatdeb]

Comfort food it is all right. My hubby is always snacking on popcorn and I try to resist, but cant always do it. He eats a lot of corn, because we have to be gluten free here because he has Celiac, and any pasta or bread, usually is made from corn and quinoa.

[galeriagila]

High Five for corn!
Or High Four, for parrots.

[seagoatdeb]

I really can't imagine that none of the parrots that we have did not eat grains in the wild, although I can't say how much of their diets may have included grains. Not all of the grains, even the ones that we eat, are cereal grains so I would imagine that these are the ones that the birds that live in areas that are a mix of grasslands and forested land would have eaten, but I really can't rule out even some of the cereal grains although I think that the cereal grains may have mostly been eaten by larger four footed vegetarian animals. I mostly try to avoid the ones that contain the highest levels of toxins although I do include some of those in which the toxins can be neutralized. I doubt that I will ever be able to completely eliminate all of the toxic elements from their foods, but I don't think that the birds did either. I think that they had other ways of purging and controlling the buildup of toxic elements contained in their food, such as the so called clay licks that certain species of parrots frequent in the wild. There is just so much yet to learn and at my age time grows short.

Yikes, I am a bit older than you. Although i can believe it possibe that some species had some natural grains, I cant see that they would have eaten them as a major part of the diet. I am sure they have ways, to control buildups, and that is why I feed some of the food groups that arent natural, but my concern is that too much can be impossible for them to purge sucessfully. There is information, on chickens, cows, pigs and other animals we have bred for food, that feeding a diet that was not there natuaral one to achieve fast gains has led to health problems for the animals. But none for parrots that I can find.

I did find a really interesting article, that takes the position that agriculture was the worst mistake human made and raises some interesting points about the effects of it. The whole thing is an interesting read but the last paragraph was interesting to sum up his position so i will quote in here and provide the link.....

"While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s."

http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02 ... human-race

[Wolf]

I really do not think that an age difference of a couple of years or at our ages even a difference of five years leaves much room to try and play the I am older than you type of age thing. You would have been better advised to use the I have many more years of experience with parrots than you do. At least then there is enough of a difference to amount to something. Our ages may give us an advantage in years of experience in some areas, but not in how much knowledge we have in a particular field of study, even a 20 year old may have much more knowledge than either of us depending on their field of study. If your remark is because of mine saying that time grows short then consider that I will be doing good to have another 20 years with my mind hopefully still intact, that is just a facet of life and really I would not want more than that with what I go through each and every day.

[seagoatdeb]

I really do not think that an age difference of a couple of years or at our ages even a difference of five years leaves much room to try and play the I am older than you type of age thing. You would have been better advised to use the I have many more years of experience with parrots than you do. At least then there is enough of a difference to amount to something. Our ages may give us an advantage in years of experience in some areas, but not in how much knowledge we have in a particular field of study, even a 20 year old may have much more knowledge than either of us depending on their field of study. If your remark is because of mine saying that time grows short then consider that I will be doing good to have another 20 years with my mind hopefully still intact, that is just a facet of life and really I would not want more than that with what I go through each and every day.

Oh you completely misunderstood, i just meant yikes i am older than you and that means not much time left to study. lol...just a look at mortality creeping up and thats all... you said...There is just so much yet to learn and at my age time grows short......And I said Yikes, I am a bit older than you, meaning my time is short, or shorter than i was previously thinking.....

[Wolf]

Well it does seem that I misunderstood you. That happens from time to time, thank you for telling me how you meant it, because I was at a total loss about it. Sorry.

[Pajarita]

Gail, I don't feed spinach to any of my birds. It's too high in oxalic acid and iron (oxalic acid inhibiting calcium absorption and birds needing very little iron makes spinach not really desirable when it comes to a parrot's diet). And, stick around, more trivia to come

The debate about what parrots evolved to eat is always a good thing because I do firmly believe that the closer we can get to what their original natural diet was, the better off they will be BUT we need to take into consideration that wild parrots have been eating grains cultivated by man for, literally, thousands of years (agriculture started in 8,500 BC and the first domesticated wheat appeared in 8,000 BC). Parrots been, like the greatest majority of birds, opportunistic feeders, they would have started eating them as soon as the first fields were ripe enough. And this doesn't only apply to grains, either. Peanuts are from South America (to be more exact, the original wild plant came from Northwest Argentina and Southwest Bolivia) but they have been cultivated in Africa since the mid 1800's and it has become one of the wild Senegal parrots main source of protein - like I said, opportunistic feeders. I am sure there are no studies about the short and/or long term consequences of parrots eating grains but I would think this is mainly because it's an accepted staple in their diet simply by means of observation. Everybody who has lived in a country where there are wild parrots knows that they eat the grain off the fields. Even people who live in the cities know this because of the constant complaints of the farmers about it. And, anybody who has followed or studied wild flocks also knows that they have proliferated in the areas where there are grain fields so I would think that parrots eating grains in the wild and not been unduly affected by it is, pretty much, an accepted fact.

Now, I do agree with you, Seagoatdeb, that there is a possibility that the 'inflated' gluten content of domesticated wheat strains might not be as healthy as they are supposed to be for parrots. Again, there is no scientific evidence that there are birds that are gluten intolerant and observation does not seem to point to it but based on the material that you provided on a previous discussion and some more research I did on my own, I decided to replace most of the wheat I use in my gloop for kamut, spelt and freekeh. I don't think that feeding whole wheat is bad for them but if I can offer them something that could be the tiniest bit better or safer in the long term, I do.

[galeriagila]

Spinach?????? Oh, if the Rickeybird knew who told me to hold off the spinach... and stems... but I'll keep your name out of it, Pajarita! And freekeh... that we can do; I love it.
So, everything is going well, gloop-wise... I knew it would.
The strangest thing is his reaction to seed... lots of them. They used to be only treats. So he keeps looking at me as if to say YOU SURE? ALL FOR ME? Could I get a recommendation for a really good mix, please?
Okay, I'll have to ask, even though I'm a little nervous about this. Every day, for 30 years, the RB gets a big fresh green chile... sometimes Cubanelle, sometimes Big Jim, sometimes Sandia... I doubt he's missed ten days in all that time. He loves to wrestle them, eat the seeds, then chew and eat the green meat and stem. It's a high point of his day, and also the most agreeable way to get him back into the casge at night. This is okay, right??????

[seagoatdeb]

Parrrots can eat peppers, they dont have receptors for spicy and will eat any kind of pepper just fine. The toxin oxalic acid, is the problem with spinach and spinach is fairly high in that toxin, and i will feed a little spinach only a couple times a month, but oxalic acid is in other foods too, mostly greens, with rubarb leaves being too high to ever eat.

It important to rotate your greens. In the brassica family, too much kale, would expose them to the toxins in the Brassica family, so you rotate the greens in that family, with anotherfamily of greens. Cauliflower and broccoli are the brassicas you can feed more often because they are the flower of the plants and have very little of the toxins in them.

As a general rule toxins are in the seeds and the leaves of plants who have evolved a way to protect themselves from animals.

[galeriagila]

Yeah, that fits well with the usual menu around here.
Thank GODDDDDDDDD there's no issue with chiles.
My husband and I figured out how much we have spent on chiles in the last 3 decades... we could have bought a small car. Finally, a place to use the violin.