I wanted to share this as I got an opinion from vet and a friend of his from Michigan State University Yesterday. When my birds went into vet, I left a couple packages of wD's products with them.
Their opinions.....
The food is actually no different than that you would get any where else. Most packaged food for birds is not organic per se, and the concern for peanut butter peanut products, is used in some birds foods.
Supreme smart selects and supreme fruit blend does this. They are required to post allergen warning on their products that all their products are manufactured in a plant that processes peanuts and tree nuts.
That said, it's not believed to be a food problem with Dailey food, per se, but rather the process of which it is made can be questionable.
The dehydration of her food that is. Since the removal of the water concentrates the sugar in the fruit. This could cause problems.
In the dehydration process, you lose a great deal of nutrients and vitamins. For example, kale and basil fresh, has loads of vitamins, but once dehydrated, only retains about 4% of what it originally had. There are lots of different kinds of nutrients which gets lost at the time of drying food. Now freeze drying food like Danita does, will retain more vitamins and nutrients. Vitamins A and C are really reduced in dehydration, now some of Dailey products require soaking in warm water to fluffing up. Now by doing that, the B vitamins mainly, along with thiamine and flavoids leach out into water and are loss. Overall you will retain about 14- 45 percent of original values.
After you dehydrate foods, you need to condition them before you package them for final storage. This means cooling them, putting them in a nonporous container for 10 to 14 days and then stirring or shaking them at least once a day. If condensation occurs, the food isn't fully dehydrated and mold can set in very quickly, so you need to catch condensation quickly and need to return it to the oven or dehydrator for further drying. If the food may have been contaminated, it needs to be pasteurized by putting it in an oven at 160 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes or in a 0-degree F freezer in a plastic bag for at least 48 hours. Food must be tossed out immediately at first sign of mold or contamination.I
Herbs, nuts, fruit and veggies, pasta all require different temperatures to dehydrate. Which requires several different hydrators, and heat settings.
So, bottom line, it's not the food per se, but most likely the process. Rotating batches.
For example, you make a large batch, you still have old batch, you process them to be shipped by combining them...what if the old batch went off?? Now mixed into new batch.
You see, there is a ton of variables here.
Bottom line for me and my birds they were lacking proper vitamins, nutrients and minerals from the food, and higher concentration of sugar from the hydration process.
