Pajarita wrote:Yes, ash is the leftover after cooking and it can be beneficial minerals but those are already listed under the Nutritional values so what the heck is it, then?
3. If the companies had the exact nutritional information available, why would they not put it on the label?
4. Are sure your birds love pellets? Because, in my personal opinion, they eat them because it's usually the only source of protein they have and, if you offer any other source (like seeds, nuts, hardboiled eggs, etc) they would go for the other source every single time and never even look at the pellets.
6. Eggbinding as A LOT to do with calcium and vit D3. It is, as a matter of fact, one of the only two reasons why a hen can get eggbound (the other one is extremely weak muscles when the bird has not been allowed to fly for years and years -the muscles that move the wings cross in the chest and become abdominal muscles and these are the same ones the hen uses to push the egg out) and the most common one BY FAR. Vit A has nothing to do with the production of an eggshell. There is another condition called dystocia which is often confused with eggbinding but it's not the same.
7. The supplements I mentioned are not vitamins. They are herbals, amino acids and stuff like that needed to maintain a bird alive when the liver is not working right and to help reduce uric acid crystals in their joints. But I do add vit C and B6 to the liver damaged birds diet and I do use their soft food for it because they need a higher dosage than you can provide with food or pellets.
Yes, the pellets can be ground and moistened but it's much harder to convert an older, sick bird to a new diet than one that is younger and healthier so it's always better to do it when there is no need instead of waiting until the eleventh hour. I do the same thing with my dogs. The young ones don't need medication but they still get the soft food I use to hide the older ones meds - this way, when they do need it, they won't be suspicious of it.
As to pellets been a good start to a balanced diet, for one thing, the people that make the pellets guess as much as you or I would because there are no scientific guidelines when it comes to parrot nutrition. And, for another, you can mess up a parrot big time even when you feed pellets if you offer stuff that is not good for them so the argument in itself is not really valid. You mention feeding spinach and broccoli and rotating them but spinach is super high in oxalic acid and should be fed VERY sparingly (my birds get spinach twice a year, if any) as calcium absorption and uric acid are always a concern with them.
Right sorry for coming back to this so late, been very busy lately.
Most petfood labels don't actually list minerals and if they do they only list the ones found in larger quantities, ASH is everything else, nothing sinister.
Yes they could list everything but the majority of pet owners are not interested and having packaging full of nutritional info due to the small size of the packaging tends deflect attention from the bits the owners are interested in -how much to feed. Most manufactures use the same labels which have been blown up for bigger bags of food rather than waste business resources by creating a new label.
Yes I am absolutely sure my parrots love their pellets, they have a very wide range of foods available to them on a daily basis in rotation besides their pellets. Harlie wont eat anything other than seed and pellets, no matter what I do to get her eating more fresh foods, she will take a nibble and that's it. She has even proven to me in the past that she is quite willing to not eat at all. I know this for fact because I weigh absolutely everything. Ollie will eat just about anything I will give him, other than sunflower seeds (only used as treats) he will eat the pellets first almost every time.
"Eggbinding as A LOT to do with calcium and vit D3" absolutely, at no point did I say that it wasn't, what I did say is its down to a whole host of nutrients and stretches way beyond those two nutrients. Struggling to pass an egg is commonly known as eggbinding in the UK regardless of the actual cause to most pet owners and indeed some vets but then you can separate it down in to individual causes. Vitamin A is extremely important to keep the mucous membranes in good working order, if they don't do their job you get a hen that cannot pass an egg easily, sometimes not at all. I apologise for being unable to reference this, without researching it from scratch to find my sources. I can confirm that Alan Jones and Brian Stockdale (Avian vets with strong nutritional interests) both support vit a deficiency as a leading cause as I have attended their lectures on the subject. Of course there are other nutrients that play a part in the causes of "eggbinding", I have just picked vit A as one example.
"Yes, the pellets can be ground and moistened but it's much harder to convert an older, sick bird to a new diet than one that is younger and healthier so it's always better to do it when there is no need instead of waiting until the eleventh hour. I do the same thing with my dogs. The young ones don't need medication but they still get the soft food I use to hide the older ones meds - this way, when they do need it, they won't be suspicious of it"
Absolutely agree with this, I've often mentioned on this forum to practice giving food via spoons and syringes to make life easier if meds need to be given. Not sure why you have raised this point in response to what I said tbh but it is a very good point if irrelevant to this subject.
"You mention feeding spinach and broccoli and rotating them but spinach is super high in oxalic acid and should be fed VERY sparingly (my birds get spinach twice a year, if any) as calcium absorption and uric acid are always a concern with them"
yep, again absolutely agree. Again don't know why you have stressed this as a point because this is what I said but less specifically. I do have to agree that regardless of if you feed pellets or not then the risk of the nutritional balance is going to be messed up, however as the birds base diet is made up of the pellets the less chance there is of screwing it up as the bird will eat less of whatever else is provided (generally but not always, unless its high fat/energy food like nuts and seeds). Therefore imo it reduces the issue of a bird potentially eating a load of spinach for example.
