Now I'm dehydrating. Pretty soon I'm going to be growing food myself.

[Tangle Elf]

In an attempt to have more control over what my birds eat, I decided to start making my own dry mix. I bought dried fruits and veggies from Mother Earth Products, nuts from nuts.com and dried herbs from Mountain Rose Herbs. I also picked up some healthy snack foods, cereals, grains and seeds from whole foods. I'm pretty sure this is cheaper than buying pre-mixed food. Yesterday I mixed the herbs together in a vita-vittles container and put it in the freezer. They should last a really long time. They only make up about 1/8 of the food content. I plan to premix some of the nuts and some of the veggies as well. Each week, when I mix bird food, I'll only be mixing together veggies, nuts, herbs then whatever else I feel like adding to the mix that week. The beauty of this is that it speeds up mixing time and makes it easier to make mixes appropriate for each bird. Kobra Kai gets less fat, Zena doesn't get nuts or seeds, Korbin Dallas gets St. John's Wort and Judy gets the large parts of the basic mix. While I was pre-mixing veggies, I thought, I bet it would be even cheaper and healthier if I dehydrated my own fruits and veggies. I have a test batch in now. It includes berries, carrots, bell pepper, banana, tomato and apple.

 

[Momto3boys]

That sounds awesome!

You'll have to take pics and let us all know how it turns out.

 

[Tangle Elf]

That sounds awesome!

You'll have to take pics and let us all know how it turns out.

You asked for it.

The herb mix is not that heavy on rose petals, they just migrated to the top. I wish we had smell-o-vision. It smells amazing.
On top of my deep freeze for size reference. I'm guessing it will be about a year worth of herbs. I have the drying packs inside, the container is air tight and I'll probably keep it in the freezer so it should be fine for a year.

I have no idea why some of my pictures attach and some go in the text.
This was my first attempt at dehydrating. I didn't think to dip the apples and bananas in lemon juice to keep them from browning. Maybe I should have read the directions before I started

 

[expressmailtome]

Everything looks great! Matt

 

[Caledon]

looks good.

Do you rehydrate them before giving them to your birds or do you just give them the dehydrated food?

I want to buy a dehydrator to make sweet potato snacks for my dog, and now I have a bird I can justify the work.