by Pajarita » Wed Jan 03, 2018 11:33 am
Any tender green [as in any seedling] is a sprout in the sense that the seed germinated into the beginning of a plant - and that only happens during the growing [breeding] season. I know that lots of people think that feeding them the most nutritious food all the time is the way to go but I don't agree. I think that following nature's 'cycles' is best. Birds don't eat well all the time and they certainly don't eat balanced meals. They go from rags to riches, from being hungry to having a plethora of choices, it depends on the season. And there are birds that completely 'flip' their overall consumption - like Northern cardinals, for example, which diet is 90 percent insects and 10 percent grains during the warm weather months but 90 percent grains and 10 percent insects in the cold months. And, if you feed them a lot of insects all the time, you end up with a very sick bird! Not that I don't give my birds enough food or crappy stuff during the winter, mind you! But I do lower the protein for my winter gloop drastically and I do reduce the overall nutritional value of their diet during the winter as well as give them 'summer' produce much less frequently replacing it with winter produce. I think that the seasonality of their diet is part of the reason why my birds are never overweight, stay healthy and they only show hormonal behaviors in season. Nature always knows best and, when it comes to birds diets, less is more most of the time.