Chick nutrition (via parents)

[~birdybea~]

My pair of budgies is doing a GREAT job keeping their 7 babies well fed, but i'm worried about one thing. They're going through the endive like you wouldn't believe. A giant handful will be completely consumed within a couple of hours (no scraps left at all, it's quite amazing). They're obviously feeding a lot of this to the chicks, so will the chicks become deficient in something else if they're getting so much of one thing? I've been offering nest mate (which is a budgie rearing crumble, designed as a soft food for parent budgies with chicks) but they don't eat that. Endive is the main soft food they'll really devour.

 

[Kimba]

try sprouts! great for the parents and easily served up by the parents. Also, any type of mash that you can get the parents to eat will help, make sure your mix has some form of protein in it, like beans. Growing chicks need more protein. The sprouts and the beans will have this.

 

[~birdybea~]

I will try the sprouts, hopefully they will try them and not assume i'm attempting to poison them.

 

[Beatriz Cazeneuve]

Budgies simply adore all kinds of greens and endive is soft and sweet-tasting so of course they love it but you can offer them other greens, too (like kale which is very nutritious) but no cabbages and no spinach, they are too high in oxalic acid and will prevent calcium absorption. If they don't like the commercial eggfood, offer them a variety of soft foods like cous-cous, gloop, polenta (they love polenta!), cream corn, grated hard-boiled egg, gloop, etc. And, if you can make them birdy bread or birdy lady fingers, better still.

 

[Iris]

A link on low oxalate diet. It appears to be very comprehensive

The Low Oxalate Diet Hope this is useful.

 

[~birdybea~]

Thanks for that info guys!! It's great. I will buy some different greens (they'll eat that), and try some of the other soft foods suggested too (they'll be more fussy with those).

 

[Billie Faye]

A link on low oxalate diet. It appears to be very comprehensive

The Low Oxalate Diet Hope this is useful.

GREAT SITE!!
Thank you so much!
I would also try some cooked sweet potato and see how they like that too..

 

[Sharpie]

Mine LOVE mashed sweet potato. I can 'hide' just about anything in it and they'll eat it.

 

[~birdybea~]

I'm not sure if these budgies will go for sweet potato, they don't get many orange veggies and when i do try to give them some it gets ignored (this is in the aviary). Still worth a go i guess.

 

[Beatriz Cazeneuve]

You can always mash the sweet potato and mix it with grated hard-boiled egg (they would eat anything that has egg in it) or you can add a drop of RPO to the hardboiled egg.

 

[Sharpie]

they would eat anything that has egg in it

Haha, that's funny. I cannot get mine to eat ANYthing with egg in it. Just about anything else, but they don't like egg. I guess there's no accounting for taste!

 

[srtiels]

Iris...Hello! great to see you here.

Another thing about oxalic acid. It does bind calcium, but if the calcium content is above the oxalic acid content then that amount is useable.

This link shows some Ox:Ca ratio's
Calcium Oxalate Content of Selected Iguana Foods

And this link has charts of nutrient contents of many veggies...
Guinea Lynx :: Vegetable and Fruit Charts