How many times have you seen novices in the bird game feeding ‘wild bird mix’ to their aviary birds in order to save money or because they just didn’t know any better?

The reason for this question and this article, is the alarming amount of bird keepers we speak to and consult for that run into major health problems after feeding and raising birds on these terrible diets.

The large majority of bird keepers know that aviary birds cant eat hard corn kernels, wont eat sorghum, detest wheat and would rather die than eat barley. Unfortunately for the birds, bitter black sunflower seeds and the odd shrivelled excuse for an oat are the best choices out of a bad bunch when they come to their food bowl and find it full of wild bird mix once again.

From here the bird then dutifully goes through the motions of tossing everything out of the mix that they cant eat – making an incredible mess and leaving them deficient of nutrients to top off the whole ordeal.

All it takes is a realistic look at what is happening when these mixes are fed, how much seed is wasted and the huge nutritional gap that is left in the birds diet – you can soon make the connection that these wild bird mixes are the actually the most expensive feed on the market and are guaranteed to give you the worst results.

Survival and the need to reproduce are natural instincts and even in the worst nutritional circumstances some birds will still manage, but it begs the question. Why are we making it harder for our birds to do something that comes naturally?

Quality Seed + Supplements: Upgrading your seed to a quality parrot mix with plenty of high spec, edible seeds is a huge improvement on wild bird mixes and with the right amount of quality supplements, this can work out to be a good solid diet. Greens, soaks and vegetables are always healthy additions with dark green and red vegetables being the pick in most cases.

Pelleted Complete Diets: Converting birds to a high quality, scientifically formulated, complete diet is the best way to ensure correct nutrition and strong, healthy birds – without a doubt. The quality of pellet diets has progressed very quickly over the past 20 years, with Vetafarm being a leading innovator in Australia and over the world. The idea behind Vetafarm complete diets is to take the guess work out of feeding these birds, by balancing their nutrition first and leaving the birds to do what they do best naturally. Fruit and vegetables may be added to the diet to enrich the bird’s experience – but are not necessary.

Poor nutrition is still a leading cause of illness and poor health in aviary birds; in fact the most common preventable problem in aviary birds today is still malnutrition. Many bird keepers often selectively forget losses in their aviaries, like the young birds that have died over the years and are forgotten in the space of time it takes their carcass to hit the bottom of the bin and the average number of young being between two and three in pairs of birds that should be producing five to six. Much of the time these are problems that relate directly back to poor nutrition and can be easily solved with the correct diet. We as keepers just need to open our eyes, face the facts and do something about it.

A very poor excuse for an Eclectus hen, suffering from malnutrition and in particular, severe Vitamin A deficiency. Injectable Vitamin A needs to be administered to turn this deficiency around. The bird will then need to be put onto a complete diet rich in the essential vitamin, such as Paradise Pellets to ensure the quality of life this animal deserves.

Written by Ben Mintern, Vetafarm
Printed in Talking Birds May 2009