Feeding Oversized Pellets

I'm always playing with my parrot's food,i try new things and lots of natural foods other than fruit/veggies.Palm nuts,seed pods,local tropical stuff mostly.I bought a large bag of Zupreems Nut Blend pellets,they are much larger than the pellets i normally feed. I was discussing them with some friends on another forum and she found this study done with OWAs (of which i have many),Seems oversize pellets are a more natural foraging device and add stimulus to captive parrots.Just thought some of you might enjoy reading this.I still have issues with large pellets because the breeder birds can not access anything they drop though the cage bottom like the indoor pets can,so waste is an issue with the breeders,but if it helps enrich their life maybe it's worth it. PS i would guess 90% of the amazons enjoy these pellets and the other 10% will eat them,but not their favorite.My only real complaint is they seem to be very sweet with sugars listed as 4th or 5th ingredient.As it is now i only fed a few at the time and mix with my more "normal" pellets. Maybe supplying your pet birds with a few pellets larger than recommended will help with enrichment,give them something to "work" on.

ScienceDirect - Applied Animal Behaviour Science : Over-sized pellets naturalize foraging time of captive Orange-winged Amazon parrots (Amazona amazonica)

Yes it does cost to download,my friend can read it though the school library. Sept. issue of Bird Talk magazine also has an excerpt.

Interesting stuff here. Before I read you post I was thinking you were going to say I found a large bird hammer to crush the pellets.

Maybe you help me delete the other thread with the same title?

OK the duplicate is deleted. To delete a message you click on go advanced and there you will find a delete button to click on. You can also click on edit and you should see a delete button.

My conure likes larger things as long as they fit in her foot. She likes to cart them up to her top perch and hold them while she eats. She does waste some of those types of food because she will drop chunks, but it makes her happy. I'm not feeding a large number of birds though so I don't worry much about waste. In fact anything left in their food bowls I put in a plastic container and then put that outside for the wild birds. The wild birds have learned to eat the pellets in fact.

There is some kind of huge pellet in the seed mix Pete was used to eating. He likes to rip off chunks from those and throw them.

I used to feed my previous birds large pellets, but found they wasted too much.. Most of it ended up in their poop tray...

Thats interesting because the last time I was ordering some pellets from the online shop I use, they didnt have the correct size so I had to get the bigger size (the one recommended for macaws) and my OWA definitely prefers these.

I've noticed mine will carry the large pellet to a perch and eat on it for a while,as opposed to just putting their head down in the dish and pigging out.

I have both medium and large pellets for Kazi. He seems to like them both equally, but it does take a bit longer for him to eat a large one. He does the same thing Henpecked's OWA does, carries it to a perch and munches away, then goes back for another one.

I read this on bird talk mag a while back too..I also started feeding large pellets and small to mix it up. But they seem to like the large ones better.

I feed mine the smaller Roudybush pellets solely to prevent waste. I do like the California blend which has dehydrated fruit & veggies added, all I do then is put some fresh broccoli and carrot in it and he's happy! I might start mixing some larger just for variety though, seems like a good idea. Roudybush adds no sugars,colors or preservatives and my birds have always loved it. My friend that is a bird store owner and breeder have been feeding this to their birds for years with great success.

roxynoodle said:

In fact anything left in their food bowls I put in a plastic container and then put that outside for the wild birds. The wild birds have learned to eat the pellets in fact.

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I like this idea on feeding the waste to the wild birds which prevents it from being waste. I will start today! Thanks.

I just read this article(It's free for me at UF). I am going to give my birds some big pellets.