Food

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Princess Yuz
Posts: 69
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2014 4:32 am

Food

Post by Princess Yuz »

What food is best to feed your IRN. I am currently giving him parrot food which consists of chillies,seeds,peanuts,etc. Is this okay or do i have to feed him a pelleted diet.
Donovan
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Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2013 4:18 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: Food

Post by Donovan »

I see that you already spotted the main food post for the forum but i'll answer anyway :)

fresh fresh fresh

parrot food contains certain good foods for them but nothing can beat straight up fresh food... i make salads for my birds... romaine lettuce, chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, bell peppers, and anything else i can come up with.

and sometimes i'll take a whole vegetable and hang it up like a toy
Donovan
Posts: 833
Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2013 4:18 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: Food

Post by Donovan »

this morning they're having oatmeal with beets, bean sprouts, apple, and kiwi mixed in... it looks really disgusting but they seem to like it
sanjays mummi
Posts: 2050
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2012 12:07 pm
Location: Bedfordshire UK

Re: Food

Post by sanjays mummi »

I hang All Sanjays fresh fruit and veg up, skewered and pegged to the palace roof, his nuts and half melon or papaya go into bowls. I introduced pistachios recently, he likes them, but not as much as he likes walnuts!
Princess Yuz
Posts: 69
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2014 4:32 am

Re: Food

Post by Princess Yuz »

Donovan wrote:I see that you already spotted the main food post for the forum but i'll answer anyway :)

fresh fresh fresh

parrot food contains certain good foods for them but nothing can beat straight up fresh food... i make salads for my birds... romaine lettuce, chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, bell peppers, and anything else i can come up with.

and sometimes i'll take a whole vegetable and hang it up like a toy
I give him fresh veg and fruit alongside the parrot food but I'm not sure if this is okay
Donovan
Posts: 833
Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2013 4:18 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: Food

Post by Donovan »

Well, I give seeds or pellets in the morning before I leave for work. Then when I come home I give the vegetables and i'll toss in a couple of bites of food from my own plate to help make theirs more interesting.

Sometimes i'll hang a piece of vegetable on a chain like a toy which works well for healthy foods they don't like.

To answer your question of if it's ok to feed bird food and vegetables along with each other, I don't see why not except with too many options at one time to he would only eat the good stuff
MissK
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Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:46 pm
Location: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

Re: Food

Post by MissK »

Of course, what the bird feels is The Good Stuff may be highly variable....... Talking about "parrot food" products:

Princess, my new bird came to me (sort of) eating "parrot food" made mainly of chilies, seeds, and peanuts. It was shocking how terrible this mix was. It was dirty, mixed with random organic detritus, mainly sunflower seeds, and the peanuts looked like they had mold growing on the shell. I took the stuff back it was so awful, and for the first two (maybe three) weeks he lived mainly on my own cleaner sunflower seeds, until I got him to accept a different "parrot mix". The mix in use at my house contains different seeds, no sunflower, and no peanut, though (sadly) no chili either. Very easy to just buy dried chilies at the human food market.

SO, my point is, you can have two different "parrot mix" and one can be acceptable and the other not. Why did I waste all that time saying all that? I want to see what mix you're using, so if it's not a great one, we can guide you better. A photo of the actual food would be great, but a link to the details online would be fine, too. You want your mix to go easy on the fatty seeds (example: sunflower, safflower) and the snacks (example: peanuts, tons of corn) and focus more on the better seeds (example: buckwheat, some millet) with grains (example: oats, barley) and quite likely vegetables (example: carrot, peppers) and even fruits (example: apple, blueberry) and bits of pellets. Naturally, being a parrot, your bird is likely to select the favourites and leave an expensive pile of rejects. Persevere.

Along with that, as Donovan said, bunches of fresh foods are in order. I can't choose for you if you will or won't offer any seeds, if you will or won't offer pellets, if you will or won't offer fresh foods, but I can tell you I offer all of the above. I offer nuts as treat by hand.
-MissK
Donovan
Posts: 833
Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2013 4:18 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: Food

Post by Donovan »

Personally I would love to feed my birds all vegetables and fruit, grains and bread, and then maybe once a week offer seeds, but i'd have to be there to take out the food after a couple hours.

I may take some vegetables that are naturally kinda dry like broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, and crumble them very small and see how well that lasts all day in a bowl, hhmm.
MissK
Posts: 3011
Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:46 pm
Location: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

Re: Food

Post by MissK »

They should be visibly fine till you get home, but who knows what happens on a microscopic level???

Pamela Clark suggests that the vegetable left closest to the natural state is OK to leave in longer, as the cell walls have not been damaged by cooking or freezing. Makes sense to her, but I would think the KNIFE might damage a few cells.....

You could dehydrate (or simply dessicate) your own fresh veggies......?

Personally, and I'll stand up and take the censure, I will leave a kale leaf in the cage from morning to midnight. They all love their kale, and nobody has ever shown any ill effect from this practice. I've experimented with other foods and I can certainly say, Don't Try This With Fruit. Carrots seem to just go limp, or dry out if they are shreds, but my gut says something else may be happening in there. Maybe it's linked to water content AND sugar content?

I guess that's all I think about that.
-MissK
Princess Yuz
Posts: 69
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2014 4:32 am

Re: Food

Post by Princess Yuz »

]
MissK wrote:Of course, what the bird feels is The Good Stuff may be highly variable....... Talking about "parrot food" products:

Princess, my new bird came to me (sort of) eating "parrot food" made mainly of chilies, seeds, and peanuts. It was shocking how terrible this mix was. It was dirty, mixed with random organic detritus, mainly sunflower seeds, and the peanuts looked like they had mold growing on the shell. I took the stuff back it was so awful, and for the first two (maybe three) weeks he lived mainly on my own cleaner sunflower seeds, until I got him to accept a different "parrot mix". The mix in use at my house contains different seeds, no sunflower, and no peanut, though (sadly) no chili either. Very easy to just buy dried chilies at the human food market.

SO, my point is, you can have two different "parrot mix" and one can be acceptable and the other not. Why did I waste all that time saying all that? I want to see what mix you're using, so if it's not a great one, we can guide you better. A photo of the actual food would be great, but a link to the details online would be fine, too. You want your mix to go easy on the fatty seeds (example: sunflower, safflower) and the snacks (example: peanuts, tons of corn) and focus more on the better seeds (example: buckwheat, some millet) with grains (example: oats, barley) and quite likely vegetables (example: carrot, peppers) and even fruits (example: apple, blueberry) and bits of pellets. Naturally, being a parrot, your bird is likely to select the favourites and leave an expensive pile of rejects. Persevere.

Along with that, as Donovan said, bunches of fresh foods are in order. I can't choose for you if you will or won't offer any seeds, if you will or won't offer pellets, if you will or won't offer fresh foods, but I can tell you I offer all of the above. I offer nuts as treat by hand.
Of course I will show you a picture. I actually have two different types of foods that I mix together.I'm extremely sorry I have the pictures saved but I do not know how to put them up on this form. Will someone please tell me.
MissK
Posts: 3011
Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:46 pm
Location: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

Re: Food

Post by MissK »

You can put your pictures on a host site, like Photobucket, and then put the link in your post here, where all we will see is the photo.
http://www.indianringneck.com/forum/vie ... oto#p90606
-MissK
Princess Yuz
Posts: 69
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2014 4:32 am

Re: Food

Post by Princess Yuz »

MissK
Posts: 3011
Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:46 pm
Location: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

Re: Food

Post by MissK »

Hi. Both those mixes appear predominantly sunflower seeds. I could not get the ingredients from their website. I think improvement is probably needed.
-MissK
Donovan
Posts: 833
Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2013 4:18 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: Food

Post by Donovan »

Princess Yuz wrote:I'm extremely sorry I have the pictures saved but I do not know how to put them up on this form. Will someone please tell me.
- I go to http://postimg.org/
- upload a picture..
- get a url for it
- and then post it here using the IMG tag.

heads up though, the resize option on that site doesn't seem to actually resize anything so it's easy to post a gigantic picture .. sometimes i have to save an image.. resize it myself and then upload it to that site.
Princess Yuz
Posts: 69
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2014 4:32 am

Re: Food

Post by Princess Yuz »

Thanks everyone
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