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Pellets: To Feed or Not to Feed

JLcribber

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painesgrey

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A great read! Thanks for posting, John.
 

aooratrix

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Nice share! I've always found her POV on parrots to be very cogent.
 

WendyN

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Awesome chop...
 

Dartman

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Dobby likes fruity Zupreem and nutri berries and whatever we're eating he can steal and veggies and things when we have some. Lurch like Zupreem and nutri berries, apples, lettuce, corn on the cob, rice, bread, etc. Nerd ate health food sunflower seeds, millet, peanuts, nutriberries, whatever we were eating but I got him in 78 with his brother and we did what we thought was best before I knew anything about Pionus parrots which were new to anyone back then. He made it 31 happy years so something was working and he was skinny but few issues that whole time, but he was skinny when we got him. We did put some pellets in with his goodies after the vet we took him to for one of his minor issues about 20 years in suggested them and he'd eat them if he felt like crunching something. We were also told seeing how he was underweight to feed him anything safe for him to fatten him up but he consistently was at 214 grams early in the morning, and maybe 227 after munching all day.
Obviously we do mostly pellets now and they seem to do well and like them so it's important that they actually eat them and their weight is consistent for the body size they happen to be.
 

Fergus Mom

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In addition to all my other bird Mommy worries, I have now officially started worrying that Fergus and Fiona are fat.
I have begun seeing a small vertical indentation down the front of their chests.
I swear last night, they sat at their respective food dishes for AN HOUR. Yes, an hour. I kept looking over to see if
they were eating all that time, and Fiona, with her butt sticking up in the air seemed to be for sure, Fergus was taking
lots of breaks and just roosting on the perch of the dish.
Mercy me, I can sure be a worrier, but I guess if I'm going to worry over something, diet would head the list for our
entire flock. That was a great article.
 

Known Space

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So I've been doing everything correctly when it comes to my parrotlet's diet! ...as correctly as we know at this point in time.

And I'm not saying this to toot my own horn, but it high-lights the reason I am using pellets.

I see a lot of people who think the act of owning a bird, and putting effort into their diet alone qualifies them to formulate a diet of fresh fruits and seeds for their pet. All of it based on "hunches" from "experience", none of it on data.

"Well, I mix everything myself and I make sure they're good "natural" ingredients, so it must be good". But I find it... such an arrogant attitude to have? Like the article said, not even the experts claim to know a lot of about captive, let alone wild, psittaciform diets. So I find it such a pompous and self-absorbed attitude to have confidence in their own skill to create these diets for their birds.

I've even seen some people here and there championing a particular seed mix and going "I REALLLY like this one!" and I'm just flabbergasted by how they can be so strongly, emotionally invested in something which effects they probably haven't even clearly seen.

That's what I meant by "not trying to toot my own horn". Because I support pellets exactly because I know I don't know jack about captive parrot diets, no matter how hard I try. All I know is that the literature so far seems to suggest that a pelleted diet is our best bet. And most of the common arguments against pellets so far have been... well, irrational or fallacious.

For what it's worth. My approach is: Pellets are their diet. Nutri-Berries their daily treat. Seeds their training rewards. And fresh fruit and vegetables their enrichment -- which I make sure vary per week and offer different colors and textures without being bad for them. And I offer half their pellets up in a way that encourages foraging -- like by shredding cardboard or paper up in their bowl.
 
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