Natural Diet for Parrots danger of cooked grains

[Pajarita]

Seagoatdeb, the first link you gave actually agrees with what I said, namely, that is only when there are health issues that PH in food is a problem. This is a line from it: "So it is rather the gut is injured and digestion is interrupted, and not that the food is the problem to begin with."

The stomach and small intestine PH normal range is well know, Seagoatdeb, and not anything that needs to be proven by me or anybody else at this point in time as it is an accepted scientific fact. Stomach goes from 1-2 to 3-4 and small intestine is 6 to 7.4. I would give you links but you always say you don't read them, don't believe in scientific sources or that the sources for the links I give are not credible but they all are, Seagoatdeb. You might agree or not with their conclusions but your saying that they are not credible doesn't make them so.

And yes, we can talk about parrots. The whole thing about feeding grains to parrots started with your questioning feeding them gluten but there has never been a single documented case of a parrot that was intolerant to it. Then you said that they are not part of their natural diet but, although you are correct that cultivated grains were not part of their original evolutionary diet, parrots have been eating them in the wild for, at least, 200 years and we have been feeding them to pet parrots for, at least, 20 years (and I am been VERY conservative on this because I can tell you that we fed our quakers grains over 50 years ago) so we do, in fact, know what it does to them long term. Then you said that it was the fact that they were cooked that was the problem but cooking actually makes them more digestible so how bad can it be when it is actually helping the bird digest them?

I am not arguing that a natural diet is best but nobody can give it to them! And the argument that cultivated grains in the amount we feed them is not part of their natural diet doesn't really work either because not even the wild ones eat their original evolutionary diet any longer! Wild senegals in Africa have been feeding and doing just fine on peanuts since the mid 1800's and peanuts are from South America! Third world countries often have up to 60% damage to cereal crops done by birds and we all know that the reason why certain parrot species are classified as agricultural pests is because they decimate cereal crops (quakers, all the psittaculas, patagonians, nandays, all the brotogeris, etc). So it's not as if feeding them grains is something that we, humans, came up with from out of the blue and that their use is unproven! It's what they have been eating in the wild for a loooooong time, what has been consensually approved by avian nutritionists and what has been working just fine with pet birds for years. Your diet sounds wonderful, Seagoatdeb, but a soaked-seed and germinated-nut based diet is a VERY difficult one to offer for the greatest majority of people (and with a higher degree of risk) or even something that anybody can say with any certitude that is any better than grains.

I am not in any way knocking down your diet - it might very well end up been the parrot diet of the future for all I know! All I am saying is that there are no real arguments to knock down a grain-based diet.

[seagoatdeb]

Soaked seeds and nuts are so easy to do, put them in to soak before you go to bed, rinse in the morning and use. Easy peasy....The stomach got injured by the eating of acidic food Pajarita you missed that in your research although, some medications or poisoning can too.

if you have seen videos of parrots in grain they totally destroy the grain, they take a bite and throw it around and chew things up. It is their playing that causes the most destruction. Anyway i have hoped for others to comment but it is only you making an argument and I want to get back to parrots, but you will likely keep on, so go ahead I give up.

[Wolf]

It is very probable that this level of information is more than most of us know much about and that the two of you are more knowledgeable in this area than most of the rest of us so we end up listening to what both of you are saying. Even if you don't see it your debate is providing a lot of information to a lot of people that have parrots. The benefits of this may not show up right away or even for a long time, but try to consider it to be like a seed that you are planting, it takes some time to germinate and start to grow.

[Pajarita]

I think that everybody reads these debates and absorbs the information given by both sides so as to reach their own conclusion even if they don't post themselves. I know I have changed my gloop recipe and the way I defrost it from our debates so I think that they are actually quite valuable. But, no, I won't continue with this argument. I think that I have proven my side of it (namely, that grains are NOT dangerous to parrots) and it would be futile to continue as we don't follow the same 'rules' As I said many times, I use, primarily, scientific sources and only anecdotal and/or my gut when there is nothing else to go by while you seem to go primarily with your gut. Different folks, different strokes!

[seagoatdeb]

I think that everybody reads these debates and absorbs the information given by both sides so as to reach their own conclusion even if they don't post themselves. I know I have changed my gloop recipe and the way I defrost it from our debates so I think that they are actually quite valuable. But, no, I won't continue with this argument. I think that I have proven my side of it (namely, that grains are NOT dangerous to parrots) and it would be futile to continue as we don't follow the same 'rules' As I said many times, I use, primarily, scientific sources and only anecdotal and/or my gut when there is nothing else to go by while you seem to go primarily with your gut. Different folks, different strokes!

I do not go priimarily by my gut!. I search and use scientific souces but I dont just blindly believe anyone. i investigate thouroughly. You have not proven anything. There is nothing in science or anywhere to prove your side. You only can state your reasons and arguments for what you do. You cant win something like this. If there is a difference between our sides, I post up what we should question and you argue to win.

[Pajarita]

Well, I don't remember getting scientific studies links that prove your points - even the link that you gave originally for this thread was advertising. I also remember posting several links to scientific studies/sources that back my opinion but you disdained them as 'uninformed' as well as the authority of the authors because, according to you, a PHD is something anybody can get and means nothing. I also remember you stating that it had been proven in a study that fresh was more nutritious than frozen and when I asked you for a single link because I had gone through 4 pages of references opening and reading each one of them and not found a single one that supported your point and your answer was something like "Yes, it's very hard to find good studies" but not provided any you have apparently found.

And when you title a thread 'Danger of cooked grains' you are not really questioning it, you are asserting (the link you gave, the ad for this woman's products, is not questioning it, either). Questioning would have been something like "Are cooked grains a danger to our parrots?" and stating the reasons as theories that warrant further research and not as facts.

And it's not a matter of 'winning', it's a matter of proving one's position (that is what a debate is all about, right? two sides defending opposite positions) and, in my opinion, I proved through scientific, historical and anecdotal evidence that cooked grains are not dangerous to parrots. Of course, I don't expect to convince you but I think that almost everybody who reads the entire thread will reach the same conclusion I have.

[seagoatdeb]

i did want to debate with you or have a debate, just peoples view points. I do not want to have to answer your debates or put all then time into finding links for you and that is not why I am in this forum. I also do not want to talk about my own diet here. i wanted to have lots of interest from others on the parrot topic, but when you debate not many want to debate so thats the end of peoples chain. Wolf seem to think it will still be good for people, and thats good, but i am done.

[Wolf]

I do think that all of the information will benefit a lot of people and that is good. But I also see that this often goes beyond debating the topic and either oversteps into a more personal state that is not very good. I recognize and have said on several occasions that while debates can be good, that not everyone wants to debate a topic and this should be respected. Sometimes it is just as well to present your views and not continue on to a debate. This does not prevent anyone from posting their opinions whether they agree or not. It only becomes a debate when one or more become interested in continuing to provide additional support for their point of view. It always takes at least two for it to become a debate so if one or the other does not continue with producing additional evidence to support their point of view, no debate is possible.

It does seem like both of you, Seagoat Deb and Pajarita , have both presented your points of view very well, why don't you both let it go for a while and allow others to think about this and post if they feel like it? Just so you know, this is not meant as moderation, just another members viewpoint.

[seagoatdeb]

Pajarita can debate with you Wolf since you like debating , I do not want to debate with her again and I have never liked it, I was in a debating team and know the rules of debate which she does not follow. She even puts word in my mouth. When she starts debating my diet that I have researched and used for over 10 years with curing my cancer without surgical introvention, and seeing other peoples improvements over the years, I am certainly not going to believe her debunkers or leave it to influence too many people. It is too frustrating to me, when she wont stop when I ask and return to parrots. Also the superior attitude about her winning and everyone agreeing with her, at least I wont see the rude things anymore. The foe button is on and I wont look at her posts unless it is somewhere she is not going to turn it into a debate and get me having to play the other side. So problem solved.

[Wolf]

While there is a lot of information provided by both of you, much of it going far deeper than most parrot owners tend to do into, the great Grain debate really has to end somewhere and give way to plain old ordinary discussion and that point has been reached and even exceeded. I was of the opinion from the beginning that parrots have always consumed some grains, but I could not and still can not say which grains they were not to what degree they were eaten. There has not been any evidence to the contrary in this respect. There has been ample evidence that grains, especially the new modern grains cause problems in humans, but nothing that shows a problem in parrots, but that may be due to the fact that the effects of grains has not been studied in parrots as it has in humans. By the same token there has been nothing presented that proves that these same grains are healthy for our birds. There has been evidence that parrots, at least some of them have eaten grains for a very long time with apparently no ill effects, but we don't know which grains these were or how much was consumed. It was shown that basically grains have been give carte blanche as far as parrots go as far as whether they were healthy or not. Nothing new with that. A seed diet as well as an all pellet diet received the same until it was proven that neither of them were all that they were cracked up to be.

In my opinion there has been nothing new proven through this as far as how healthy grains are for parrots. I do think that there has been enough evidence presented to show that we do need studies done to provide us with answers to this question. Many times when studies have not been done with parrots, it has been the normal practice on this and other forums to use evidence from human and sometimes other animal studies. This was done in this topic and I think that there was enough evidence presented that we should all take a closer look as to whether grains are as good for out parrots as we normally think of them as being.