Natural Diet for Parrots danger of cooked grains

[seagoatdeb]

Just some info from author Machelle Pacion on why cooked foods are not healthy for parrot diets. Michelle promotes raw food diets and educates through lectures and books. Its a short article, and focuses on an natural alkaline environment versus an acidic diet of cooked food. We all want a healthy diet for our parrots so feedback will be great.

http://exoticbirdclubonline.com/2016/06 ... ked-foods/

[liz]

I don't agree with parts of it but the post was really good. Thank you for posting.

[Wolf]

Well I feed my birds a cooked and partialy cooked food that is called gloop as that was what I learned it as. It contains partly cooked whole grains, thoroughly cooked navy beans and lentils and frozen vegetables. I also add to it after it has cooked enough that the cooking process is stopped fresh raw produce and I also give them tree nuts and fresh raw fruits and veggies. I believe that the amount of fresh raw foods that my birds receive daily is more than adequate to prevent turning my birds body acidic and whenever I have had blood work done it comes back as well within the established norms for that species of parrot.

I don't disagree that raw foods might be the best in the long run, but the foods that these birds eat in the wild are not generally available where I live or even on line. Regardless of what I think in these terms it appears to me that everything that the person who wrote this article claimed was all leading up to one thing which is to sell us their own commercially manufactured bird food as shown in the closing statements. To me it is just another advertisement.

[Pajarita]

Yes, the advertisement part of it makes it highly questionable in my opinion, too. She also mentions the liver and kidneys as part of the endocrine system (?!). But, aside from that, I don't actually disagree with the premise that a diet based on highly processed commercial food is not good for parrots as that is one of the reasons why I don't feed pellets. I also agree with the statement that an acidic diet all the time is not good but I won't go as far as to say that we should strive for high alkaline. I think that a more neutral PH is the answer. The only people (we don't know anything about parrots) that should always eat an alkaline diet are the ones that produce too much acid on their own (like people who suffer from chronic heartburn, for example).

The truth is that, although grains are acidic, their levels of PH are actually quite close to neutral (for what I have been able to find -oat, barley and wheat, they are all over 6 -neutral been a 7) and you can, actually, decrease the acidity by soaking them first and only cooking them through simmering and not all the way through (which is also what I do and recommend for the gloop). Then you add the frozen (which means they are, basically, raw) veggies to it and you end up with a pretty balanced PH slightly alkaline.

[seagoatdeb]

Saying the advertisment part is questionable is not fair. This woman gave lectures and wrote books long before she developed food that is dehydrated at temperatures so it is still raw. Her vision is to bring healthy food to parrots, so that is a noble thing to me and not questionable. Many people that have devoted their lives to parrots well being in nutrition or training have developed products. I only gave a link to the info i was interested in from her facebook group and not information from any of her books.

If there is information that conflicts with her findings that is what is important. What we should be looking at is more information on the concepts, and or more info on how we can feed more natural to our parrots. It is hard to do, I know. In the wild Red Belly Parrots had a diet high in Acacia Berries. Well I cant find an acacia plant to plant, or even one for a house plant, so trying to find the best substitute for that is very hard. They ate various greens, and when eating grains that humans planted ate the green seeds not the seeds that were ready to be harvested and had changed compostion, so i am very carefull with commercial grains. With Sunny, he had a much more varied diet, but then that would depend on what sub species he has in him, but i find he is naturally less picky,(he eats almost everything) and the pickiness alone might mean something.

[Wolf]

I do not see why it is not fair Doctors Harrison became an avian vet and even authored avian medical texts and then went on to produce commercial pellets for birds claiming that this food was all a parrot needed to eat to remain healthy.

I am not argueing whether a parrot in the wild cooks its food or not, nor am I arguing whether a raw diet is better or not for our birds, as I believe that a raw diet is healthier for all of us human and otherwise.

What I am pointing out is that this article is just another advertisement for another bird food, which it is. That is a fact that I can't change.

Although I believe that a raw diet is healthier for our parrots as well as us and I suspect that the same raw diet may increase the longevity of our birds, there are no studies that have been carried out long enough to substantiate this claim. Regardless of who she is or what her other virtues may be when she started making claims that are unsubstantiated she turned what was largely an informative article into just another advertisement for he commercial bird food.

[Pajarita]

Well, one could argue if it's fair or not but a conflict of interest is always suspicious, Seagoatdeb, and, given human nature, rightly so. And the fact that somebody has given lectures and written a book mean nothing to me (I've given lectures and conducted workshops myself and could write a book on parrot nutrition if I wanted to - you could too!) And I am definitely not arguing her motives or intentions, I am sure that she has put a lot of thought and effort into what she sells, it's just that I don't agree that cooked grains are dangerous to parrots and that their diet should be high alkaline.

Is a raw diet ideal? Yes, of course it is. ALL wild animals diets are raw so, obviously, it is what nature meant for them to eat. But, given the restrictions on the availability of raw materials as well as the kind of cost, time and effort it would take vis a vis the fact that pet parrots have been eating grains that have been processed in one way or another for years and years and years without a single indication that this diet sickens them, I would say that the diet she proposes is highly impractical and not really necessary. I would also not consider buying dehydrated food for mine...

[seagoatdeb]

Raw food dehydration is done at a very low temperature to keep it raw. I often go for periods where I am raw vegan for a while to maintain opimum health for me. I can control just how dry any food item is that I dehdrate myself at a low temperature. The biggest problem with dehydrating at a low temperatures to maintain the raw benefits is that it takes a lot longer and if you have pantry moths, they will get into your dehydrator, so I am currentlly trying to get rid of the stubborn pests, so I can start dehydrating again.

[Pajarita]

Yes, you mentioned the dehydrating at low temperatures as a better option but wouldn't the time it takes for the produce to dehydrate added to the time it takes to become re-hydrated have a negative effect on the nutritional value? Is there a study that compares the nutritional value of produce prepared this way and just plain frozen and thawed? I looked but I couldn't find anything...

[seagoatdeb]

You can control just how dehydrated to make it at the low temperature, so you would not rehydrate it as there is no need, so there will not be a study. There is lots of information on thawing frozen fruit and veggies, rupturing the cell walls, thats why they get mushy. There is information on dehydrating at low temperatures to keep vitamins, and enzymes from degrading. Frozen veggies are handy for some, but you have to worry about listeria containation these days, I keep seeing more recalls.

Dehydrating takes some water out so foods can be kept at room temperature longer and are a method for longer storage. Raw dehydrating is done at a low temperature and you can control just how much water you take out, so the food is not even close to as dry as baked, or high temperture dehydration. It would be closer to what a parrot would eat in the wild, when they ate a berry that had fallen to the ground and was a little dryed. When you dehydrate at low temperature you have to keep the items in the fridge after, most of the time.

In humans, there is a controversy over frozen and raw in the raw community. There is controversy over grains in the health community. In my life, I saw tremendous improvement in my daughters life when she quit eating almost all grains, and my husbands health improved after his celiac diagnosis, but before he got sick enough to develope the auto immune disease he was gluten intolerant for years, and looking back you can see now where it affected him throughout his life. So many people require different diets to be healthy, and then parrots ate different diets in the wild. All we can try to do is feed as natural as possible, and because we cant get the exact food the parrot ate we have to do our best with different foods.

I have chosen to stay very low on all grains with my parrots, and even in my own diet, based on many years of research and life experience. Grains are not edible for parrots unless cooked or in a "green state" ( green meaning a state of new budding in a plant, or sprouting from the mature seed,) In the wild any grains they ate were green raw grains which they could digest. I believe raw diets for parrots can be much closer to natural and they are not hard to do at all, I think many believe they are because they dont have the experience and they havent done the research, so they dont know the easy ways to do it. Raw vegetables tend to be able to be at room tempertature for long periods of time, and so can some fruits, like peppers. Cooked grains, can not be out for that long without having all kinds of "bad things" growing on them. Parrots seem to tolerate more than we can eating food that has been sitting out all day, but they also cant tell us if they dont feel tip top some days or what that does to them in the long run.