Natural Diet for Parrots danger of cooked grains

[Pajarita]

Hmmm, do you have any literature that says that birds cannot digest raw grains unless they are green? Because I have to tell you that I have, personally, seen wild parrots eating raw grains like there is no tomorrow and most of the 'good' seed mixes we have been feeding them for years have raw grains (oats, wheat, etc) in them.

[seagoatdeb]

Hmmm, do you have any literature that says that birds cannot digest raw grains unless they are green? Because I have to tell you that I have, personally, seen wild parrots eating raw grains like there is no tomorrow and most of the 'good' seed mixes we have been feeding them for years have raw grains (oats, wheat, etc) in them.

Grains evolved to protect themselves like lots of plants did and contain Protease inhibitors, and for any animal this is exptremely hard on digestion, so i should have said hard on them to digest and not that they cant digest. That why humans have to cook them. Parrots may have eaten some human planted grains that were ready to harvest in times of great hunger but it may have been very detremental to their health. I have come across information through the years and i have known this for a long time. I dont usually get any mixes with raw grains in, but my Pois will not eat raw grains anyway, and I sprout.

Growing grains are green at first and then the protease inhibitor buids up as they mature. I liked to chew on the green grains when I was a kid. I have seen many posts from people over the years in facebook groups that took parrrots off grains for plucking problems and their feathers grew back in. The raw diet people have a lot of success with helping plucking too, I made the post so anyone interested could do the research and check this out for themselves, especially if they have some parrots with problem plucking and havent been able to stop it with their current diet and need something else to try.

[Wolf]

Do you have two to four different sources of information validating what you are saying as it concerns plucking, that you could share with me?

[Pajarita]

Grains evolved to protect themselves like lots of plants did and contain Protease inhibitors, and for any animal this is exptremely hard on digestion, so i should have said hard on them to digest and not that they cant digest. That why humans have to cook them. Parrots may have eaten some human planted grains that were ready to harvest in times of great hunger but it may have been very detremental to their health. I have come across information through the years and i have known this for a long time. I dont usually get any mixes with raw grains in, but my Pois will not eat raw grains anyway, and I sprout.

Growing grains are green at first and then the protease inhibitor buids up as they mature. I liked to chew on the green grains when I was a kid. I have seen many posts from people over the years in facebook groups that took parrrots off grains for plucking problems and their feathers grew back in. The raw diet people have a lot of success with helping plucking too, I made the post so anyone interested could do the research and check this out for themselves, especially if they have some parrots with problem plucking and havent been able to stop it with their current diet and need something else to try.

Well, people do eat, nowadays, raw ripe wheat. There is an arab dish called kibbeh (I have a Syrian friend) that is made with raw ground beef mixed with raw bulgur wheat and spices. People also eat raw rolled oats all the time (energy bars, granola and as breakfast with milk).

And parrots eat today raw grains all the time in the wild and in captivity -no maybe about it and no apparent detriment to their health. Please provide us with links to this information you have come across through the years because I have never found any reference to any of this, not even anecdotal.

[seagoatdeb]

Do you have two to four different sources of information validating what you are saying as it concerns plucking, that you could share with me?

I have been in raw food groups for a long time, and parrot health groups for a long time and thats why I feed so much raw, and have seen info a lot of times over the years, i sent you a pm with some info.

[Pajarita]

Seagoatdeb, please post the links here. We all want access to them (I have a couple of plucking birds myself).

[seagoatdeb]

Seagoatdeb, please post the links here. We all want access to them (I have a couple of plucking birds myself).

Pajarita, the two sources of expert people I know of, I have already mentioned in this forum and are Machelle who useds raw diet for plucking and Jason Crean, who uses raw diet and herbal teas. Over the years i have seen many times in posts how raw diet improved both plucking and behavior problems. i am in 3 raw food groups, so i have seen many posts and the groups have thousands of members who post a lot, so there are many days worth of looking i would have to do to find links, but i think you have enough to point you in the direction to do your own research.

I havent had any parrots who plucked but personally, I have seen plummage improvements, mood stablility, and energy improvements when mostly raw is introduced.

My sugggestion is to use more raw when you have a parrot who is still plucking when what you have already tried has reached the end of improvement, but the parrot is still plucking. Its basically the same as your gloop, but you dont use any cooked food, You sprout instead. Also the raw people vary the veggies and fruits a lot, and avoid feeding exactly the same thing too often. Raw oils are important too for plucking parrots, I have seen this posted many times over the years.

[seagoatdeb]

[

Well, people do eat, nowadays, raw ripe wheat. There is an arab dish called kibbeh (I have a Syrian friend) that is made with raw ground beef mixed with raw bulgur wheat and spices. People also eat raw rolled oats all the time (energy bars, granola and as breakfast with milk).

Bulgur wheat is a whole wheat grain that has been cracked and partially pre-cooked. Rolled oats are traditionally oat groats that have been de-husked, steamed and then rolled into flat flakes under heavy rollers before being stabilized by being lightly toasted. So they are not raw.

Here is a link that is all about human and grains, but the part that is of interest to my answer here is the part titled Grain Processing, " unlike herbavores with multi chambered stomachs, who can live on shrubbery, we cant just grab a grain seed of a stem of grass and start noshing. We need to processs grains in order to digest them. Genetic research shows that farmers in the neolithic area bred plants such as corn to make them more edible"

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-grains

[Pajarita]

As far as I know, in middle eastern cuisine, bulgur is usually not cooked in any way, it's just cracked wheat but it doesn't matter.

As to the raw diet helping pluckers, I am sorry but your reading many posts cannot be used as proof. It's not that I don't believe you. I do. I have cured pluckers myself and can attest to the fact that a fresh food diet is part of the 'cure' but, unless there is no other change in the bird's life (namely, better light, better light schedule, more attention, etc) one cannot say with any type of certainty that it was, indeed, the raw food diet and not the general better husbandry that did it.

Personally, I would think that if a raw diet really was the only thing needed for curing pluckers, we would have all heard about it a million times.

[Wolf]

I have had three birds come to me that plucked, the first was Kookooloo, CAG, who also self mutilated, the second was Keeta, Parrotlet, and the third is Marley a budgie. All of them have made tremendous improvement except for Marley who will never have adequate feathering as there is too much damage to the follicles so they don't grow back. Keeta has not plucked since coming here. Kookooloo has been the hardest and her plucking is mostly tied into the attention that she receives. The difference with her plucking is that while I have been able to reduce it to the point that most people would not know that she was still plucking unless they saw the underside of her wings, I have not been able to get her to stop it completely. That means that I still need to do something that I am not.

I am just trying to see if there is anything that I might have missed that I can do to help her to stop this plucking. More raw foods my be just what is required as it has been a long journey to get her to eat any raw foods at all. I work with her on this all the time but will try harder. I have her on a solar light schedule I have improved her diet in every way although she still does not eat enough raw foods. I spend as much time with her as I can and can see that she is a much happier bird and the relationship between us keeps growing and improving and it was great to begin with, but it is still improving.

I am doing all that I know to do and am still looking for answers, maybe I am doing all that can be done and this will improve at the rate I can get her to accept more raw foods, I don't know, but until I can fix this I will keep looking and keep trying, she deserves that from me.