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 Post subject: Re: Only pellets?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:55 pm 
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tielfan wrote:
Vegetables are a great healthy food, and including them in the diet is a huge improvement over feeding only seeds. But it's basically impossible to come anywhere close to the ideal balance this way unless you're a nutritionist or have a mash recipe where somebody has done the work of figuring out what it takes to achieve a good balance. For example seeds plus veggies isn't going to have enough protein unless the veggies include a significant amount of beans. The calcium will probably be deficient too. You simply aren't going to get any vitamin D3 or B12 this way because these vitamins aren't available from plant foods.

A study by Donald Brightsmith (he's famous for studying the parrot clay licks in South America) found that a diet of 25% pellets, 25% seed and 50% vegetables and fruits contained too much fat and was deficient in calcium, sodium and iron. It was probably deficient in other things too like protein, but they only tested for certain items. http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1647/2011-025R.1 I was pretty shocked at these results. The pellets alone would have covered a significant percentage of the needs, and I would have thought that such a large amount of vegetables would have covered the rest of the mineral needs. But it didn't.

Also grains should be part of the diet well a cockatiels diet anyway.I feed my birds green beans but not all the time.Both my tiels weigh 94 grams.



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 Post subject: Re: Only pellets?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 9:36 am 
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A lot of the "seeds" we give our birds are actually grains, like millet, oats and canary grass seed. Other grains like wheat and corn are basically more of the same - the exact nutritional content varies, but it's not going to supply the nutrients that are missing from seeds.

The green part of the bean isn't what supplies the missing amino acids - it's the "seed" part of the bean. You basically need legumes (peas, lentils, the type of dried beans that we use to make soup) to go along with the grains like corn and bird seed. To make it more complicated, most of these legumes need to be cooked to eliminate natural toxins, but some are OK if you just sprout them.

The "true" seeds are things like sunflower and safflower that have a lot of oil in them. Their nutritional content is closer to nuts than to grains like millet and oats.

There's a different thread going about how to make a bird happy. Part of the answer is to feed a diet that's well balanced to help keep him healthy, but also to provide many different types of food so eating is interesting and enjoyable. Feeding nothing but pellets might or might not be the best way to keep him healthy, but it's definitely not the best way to have a "food is fun" experience. So my recommendation is to feed a significant amount of pellets but offer lots of other healthy foods too.



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 Post subject: Re: Only pellets?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 7:06 pm 
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if seeds in bulk have added vitamins, they won't sprout. At least this is what I was told.



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 Post subject: Re: Only pellets?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 8:05 pm 
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The vitamins are sprayed on the shell so they probably wouldn't interfere with germination. If anything they might serve as fertilizer lol.

The problem with spraying vitamins on the shell is that birds don't eat the shell, and they have dry tongues so very little of the vitamin rubs off in the bird's mouth. They're not going to actually consume much of the vitamins.



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 Post subject: Re: Only pellets?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:43 pm 
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so does it make sense to buy with vitamins or not?
store also told me that they don't add sunflower seeds in the main seed mix (that has vitamins) because birds won't be able to crack the shell.



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 Post subject: Re: Only pellets?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:49 pm 
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It doesn't make sense to buy vitamin-enriched seeds because the birds will get almost none of the vitamins. But vitamin-enriched is easier to find than plain.

Sunflower seeds are too big for budgies but cockatiels can handle them pretty easily. Sunflower is nutritious but very high in fat, so the quantity needs to be kept fairly low. Some seed mixes have way too much sunflower, and some people deal with it by buying a mix with sunflower and another mix without it, and combining them.



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 Post subject: Re: Only pellets?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 3:33 pm 
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tielfan wrote:
It doesn't make sense to buy vitamin-enriched seeds because the birds will get almost none of the vitamins. But vitamin-enriched is easier to find than plain.

Sunflower seeds are too big for budgies but cockatiels can handle them pretty easily. Sunflower is nutritious but very high in fat, so the quantity needs to be kept fairly low. Some seed mixes have way too much sunflower, and some people deal with it by buying a mix with sunflower and another mix without it, and combining them.

Or you could just pour some seed into the birds bowl and if you think theres too much sunflower in their bowl take some out and put it back in the bag easy.



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