Changing water/soup

[cstone01]

Our bird loves to put his food in his water dish and make “Soup” he will even take food items from his stand back to his cage and drop it in this water there then fish aroung in it with his foot coming out all gloopy. His favorite water additions are dill and steamed veggies. I am home all day and Every time I see that his water is dirty I change it, sometimes 7 or 8 times a day because it looks on sanitary. Since he is trying to create this mess should I leave it in for him longer? He will sometimes eat the soggy food but the majority of the food he eats does not come out of the soup… It just seems un clean to me, is it okay to leave it for him for a few hours?

He gets 1 tablespoon a day of the seed pellet mix he was on at his old home and nearly all of that ends up in the soup as well.

Additionally is there any information on how long the seed/pellet mix for last before it expires? Because we give him very little of that per day the container that he came with from his old home will surely last a very long time. We have already had him about five buns. Should I throw that old mix away soon? He only gets a little spoonful but is always very excited for it .

[liz]

I LMAO when I watched Rambo/Rainbow dip a soda cracker then wonder where it went.

[Pajarita]

Usually (I am not saying this is the case with your bird, just making a general comment about its behavior), birds that dip their food in water is because they don't get enough 'wet' food. I feed gloop and raw produce for breakfast and all day picking and none of them dips anything in their water bowls BUT when I give them birdy bread for breakfast, all four amazons dip it in the water. Now, amazons, like your Alexandrine, have natural diets very high in moisture so I assume that the birdy bread is not 'wet' enough for their taste after getting gloop every day. Why don't you try to give him gloop and raw produce (steamed veggies are not really very nutritious, you know) for breakfast and the seed mix (it should be a finch seed mix) for dinner? That's what I feed my IRNs (first cousins to Alexes) and they love it. It might also stop him from putting everything in its water dish after a while...

Another thing, you might want to be extra careful with dill because extreme exposure causes skin reactions (dermatitis). I don't feed it to my birds because of this.

As to how long is seed good... well, I am afraid that it's only three months from harvest to consumption because anything longer than that will elevate the aflatoxin to dangerous levels.
Aflatoxin is produced by the aspergillus fungus which is UBIQUITOUS in nature but concentrated in grains and seeds more than anywhere else - it's 100% toxic, attacks the liver and kills the bird (I had an orange winged amazon that died from it - he was an ex-breeder that had been fed old seed for a long time, apparently). The problem with packaged seed is that, as far as I know, they don't have any dates on them so, when you buy it in the store, you don't really know how long it's been sitting on the shelf... and it doesn't matter if it's organic because it makes no difference. I buy my seed in small batches, directly from the manufacturer to ensure it's always fresh and the aflatoxin levels are the lowest they can be. I suggest you do the same.