by Pajarita » Mon Jul 01, 2019 1:20 pm
Chop is made out of chopped fresh veggies (can be served fresh or it can be made in a big batch and frozen in individual portions) while gloop is made out of cooked whole grains and chopped, whole (if it's something small like corn or peas) or chunked frozen veggies (but the sweet potatoes are cooked). Chop tends to be in smaller and more uniformely sized pieces (people put the stuff through the processor) than gloop which doesn't offer the bird the ability to pick things out (all my birds have a favorite veggie -99% of the time, it's corn- that they always go for first thing). In terms of foraging, in reality, neither works because foraging implies actively looking/working for food which is not what either chop or gloop provides. When all my birds lived cage-free, I used to put the produce in different places all the time (I would skewer them on branches and choose a different spot and branch every day or half-hide them under things -like leaving a piece showing so they would have to lift the toy, paper or whatever to get to it) and once I move back home they will get that, again.
I like gloop because:
a) my birds like it better (I tried chop a long time ago and they did not like it so I assume that it would be harder for me to transition a seedjunkie to it than it is to gloop -which I can do in two or three days)
b) it's more nutritious than chop (frozen versus fresh - by the way, you should try giving Chance romaine instead of iceberg or some other leafy -my birds love crunchy stalks like Swiss chard and bokchoy and, of course, everybirdy's favorite: raw broccoli)
c) it's more 'rounded' nutrition as it has whole grains -which chop doesn't- plus I've put a lot of thought into what veggies go in there and if you do a bit of research, you will find that my recipe pretty much covers the entire gamut of vitamins and minerals (with the exception of D3, of course)
d) the bigger pieces seem to me to be more 'natural' in terms of what parrots eat in the wild than a mish-mash where they cannot separate one thing from another.