Animalia
Soft Food
We use this term to refer to our soak and sprout mix with added fruit, vegetables, berries, extruded soy and animal protein (twice a week protein).
Water
We use tank water (rainwater collected from the roof), passed through 3 filters (20 micron, 1 or 5 micron and a UV sterilizer). You should be careful if using unfiltered tank water for soak and particularly for sprouts as this allows time for bacterial growth. Boiling water for 10mins before use is recommended in these instances.
We have found that many of our birds refuse to drink water when offered chlorinated town supply, or will cough and splutter when they do drink it. They are not used to the taste and to be honest I do not blame them, you "townies" drink awful water. They do get used to it over time and settle in, you may offer bottled water or can let the tap water sit for 'a while' for the chlorine to evaporate which improves the taste somewhat.
01
Soak mix
This food is only soaked for 6-12 hours in cold water. It does NOT need to sprout, it just needs to be softened by the water. The peas should swell and be soft enough to break with your finger nail.
Method:
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Place enough dry seed into a CLEAN container large enough to hold at least double that amount of dry mix.
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Rinse thoroughly with CLEAN water. You may also choose to do this in a sieve or colander.
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Soak the seed in cold water - be sure to use enough that as the seed swells it does not use up the water and come up out of the water. about 50% more water than is needed to cover the seed is recommended.
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Leave for 6-12 hours sitting in the water.
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RINSE AGAIN thoroughly with clean water and drain off excess water.
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Offer to birds in the morning, if you live in a warm climate you should monitor the food and remove before any sour smell results. In summer in NZ we suggest removing the feed after about 4 hours. If you are unable to remove the food be sure to feed a small amount only such that the bird(s) finish all of it early and there is nothing left to go sour, or you may choose to offer this later in the day when you are able to remove it.
It is better not to offer this than to allow it to sour. Sour food can kill your birds - keep things clean and fresh.
02
Project Name
Sprout Mix
This needs to be soaked for 6- 12 hours and then takes 12-72 hours to sprout depending on seed used and temperature in the area held and of water used to soak. THIS IS A RISKIER FOOD TO FEED AND SHOULD ONLY BE DONE IF YOU ARE CONFIDENT YOU CAN DO IT RIGHT, IN MANY CASES THE RISK OUTWEIGHS THE REWARD.
Method:
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Rinse thoroughly with warm water and then Soak the seed in warm tap water, we use about 55C.
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Soak for about 5-8 hours then drain and rinse again with warm tap water.
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Drain and stand overnight at about 30C. This should give you roots on sunflower of about 3-5mm, mung beans may be a bit longer and buckwheat barely started.
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Rinse with COLD water before use.
As with the soak mix it is important the sprout mix (any food offered really) is not allowed to sour in the cage. It is better not to offer it on days you are unable to remove it in a timely manner, or to offer a very small amount so that you know the bird will finish all of the food so it cannot go off.
03
Project Name
Fruit and Vegetables
A mix of fruit and vegetables can and should be offered. You may mix this into the soak and sprout seeds or offer it separately. We prefer to chop this reasonably finely using a food processor. This is in part to give us a good distribution in the mix and also to reduce waste as the birds will often take a large piece of something, have one bite and drop the rest through the wire at the bottom of the cage. We also chop large nuts like Walnuts, Almonds and Brazil Nuts smaller for this reason.
When deciding on the mix of fruit and vegetables you should consider the various groups they may fall in and what vitamins they will be high in just as you would for your own diet. Feeding for instance crown pumpkin and butternut and buttercup does not really qualify as 3 different vegetables, you would rather have pumpkin and a leafy green like spinach or silverbeet. A variety of flavours and textures are great to have so it is not wrong to offer a number of different pumpkins just do not consider that to be sustainable and balanced in the long term.
We generally consider carrots, pumpkins and kumara to be interchangeable. Silverbeet/Kale/Spinach are all considered similar for our purposes. We feed Beetroot on a regular basis and do not consider this too similar to pumpkins and carrots.
We are not nutrition experts. This is just what we have been doing for decades and it seems to work really well.
Caution:
Beware high sugar fruit like grapes, apples and the like. Fruit generally does not make up a large portion of our birds' diet (maybe about 10% of the soft food mix at a guess). The birds will eat lots of these but most modern varieties available from supermarkets are relatively low in nutrition and high in sugar. This applies to Eclectus as well in my view. We do not subscribe to the view that Eccys should be fed a frugivore diet. We do not have access to the types and variety of fruit they consume in the wild and our fruit do not generally contain bugs as the wild ones would.
Also be careful of corn on the cob, it is very popular with most birds but binds calcium so can result in health issues if offered in an unlimited amount.
04
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Pellets
We use Aviplus Maintenance and Breeder pellets. The variant used depends on the species and age of the birds and the time of year.
Breeder pellets are recommended for birds in the lead up to breeding and during breeding and feeding chicks. For some species this is season specific, for others (like sun conures) it is not. The difference between the two for pet birds is small and we suggest using maintenance once babies are over about 6 months old. For species like African Greys, Eclectus, Amazons and Macaws breeder may be used for longer. Galahs in particular are susceptible to obesity and should be moved to a lower calorie lower fat diet when not breeding (for pet birds this can be maintained year round but for breeding birds should be altered when you want them to breed).
04
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Seed
Dry seed is important to some species' health. We do not feed a large amount of dry seed and nuts to most species and where we do we prefer to use NZ grown or imported but untreated seeds where possible (heat treatment on importation alters the nutrition composition of the seed).
NZ grown sunflower in particular is quite important as the fat to protein ratio is quite different to imported and heat treated seed. We suggest offering dry seed appropriate to the species but in limited amounts where birds are not breeding.