Do you know what's in your bird's food?

[Amber]

so yes READ all the ingredients in your bird's food, and yours too and QUESTION anything that seems unnecessary or that your bird would not be exposed to in the wild.

ohh and just so you know corn and soy are one of the cheapest food ingredients produced, specially the genetically modified varieties.

this is my bird's food: Natural Food Treats and Supplements for Birds - Dr. Harvey's

Agreed!

I like Dr Harvey's, I know a lorikeet keeper who loves their bee pollen for her birds, and I like to occasionally give alex some of it (our birds do sometimes eat pollen, nectar flowers, etc in the wild, after all), along with their sweet potato thingys! I wish it was easier to get here!

 

[lene1949]

The import restrictions are probably why pellets are so expensive here in Australia... Like $17 per kilo!

 

[Remy]

TOP looks great! According to the site, they're also about half the cost of Harrison's. Maybe I could mix them together.

 

[Zazusmommy]

bee pollen seems like one of today's many superfoods, just like spirulina, acai berries, chlorella etc... although not much research is done on it I think its a pretty good source of vitamins and animo acids, as long as it didnt go through too much processing, and preferably organic of course.
Dr. Harvey was nice enough to take my call when i called with a simple question, I would've been happy to get answers from his assistants but they insisted that I could ask him directly if i wanted, so i did, and he spend a good 7 mins talking to me about bird food

 

[dishgal1]

I know this is an old thread but worth commenting on.
We also like Dr. Harvey's because of the bee pollen.
I so worry about ingredients in bird food. Tops is CERTIFIED Organic. Natural just doesn't cut it these days. It is a trick word for food whether human or animal.

 

[DebsFlock]

I think this is a case where you want to think carefully about why you are feeding what you are feeding. The original "point" of pellets was to deliver a specific set of nutrients that were commonly not properly balanced in captive parrots diet of "natural" foods. It is entirely possible that these nutrients are not ideally balanced in even the native diet in the wild -- wild animals rarely live nearly as long as their captive siblings. So most pellets are made from natural ingredients supplemented with specific nutrients, typically vitamins and minerals, which may have off-putting sounding chemical names, especially if they aren't readily available in whole-food forms. But even the most benign substance typically has a scary-sounding chemical name, so I think using the readability of a label as the sole guide to what is healthful is potentially misleading and may play into the hands of advertisers who just want to sell product.

T.O.P. is a certified organic product, and the organic certification is the only meaningful certification we currently have in the US. However, while I think it is a fine component in a diet, I don't feel it does the same JOB a supplemented pellet does. It's a handy presentation of whole foods, as are seed mixes. But it may not be nutritionally complete in the same way, say, a Roudybush pellet with it's vitamin and mineral supplementation is. So you may be avoiding exposure to things that you personally don't recognize as nutrients, but at the same time risking nutritional deficiencies precisely because those ingredients aren't present.

Many vitamins and minerals are toxic when you have too high a dose. The consequences can be equally bad when you don't have enough. Just because a substance fed in high amounts causes problems does not mean it is inherently bad. Selenium is a case in point where I've made that mistake myself with my horse. Because people were tending to over-supplement it and caused some toxicity issues, I avoided it and wound up with a severely selenium-deficient horse. Too much would not have been good, but too little was equally bad, and there was substantial discomfort involved. It's not clear to me that the synthetic vitamin K (it's still chemically vitamin K) is any more harmful than naturally derived vitamin K. It's a fat-soluble vitamin, not a water-soluble vitamin, so a body cannot easily eliminate excess dosage. You don't want to overdose it when it is of natural origin. Many of the things that get implicated as being harmful are demonstrated harmful at enormously high dosage, and even the healthiest thing can be harmful in excess. One has to be careful when interpreting results like that. (On the flip side, our birds are more sensitive than we are -- even if you just scale by weight, a toxic dose is going to be much, much smaller than for the average mammal. For that reason, research involving birds and appropriate dosage levels are the most compelling to me. Most of the major manufacturers do feeding trials.)

It is true that the nutritional research on parrots is still in its infancy and you can argue that the manufacturers don't really know what they are doing. But I submit that they know a lot more than *I* do, and that a supplemented pellet is the best shot at ideal nutrition you are going to get. If you want to go organic, I think Harrison's is better than T.O.P because it is supplemented, but a lot of birds won't eat it.... which is the other factor... it doesn't matter HOW nutritious something is if it doesn't get eaten!

As a scientist by training, the current movement towards throwing research completely out of the window and embracing everything that is "natural" worries me deeply. So many things that are natural are harmful. In some cases they are merely unproven, and may possibly be good, but in other cases they are clearly demonstrated to be ineffective or downright harmful. But because they sound more comforting than cold chemical nomenclature, I meet more and more people who just choose to believe they are better without seeking any proof of that. I want to make it clear I'm aiming that statement at anyone here, I'm thinking of pet food representatives I meet and students in my introductory Astronomy class. But the attitude is becoming more and more prevalent in our society and I think it makes it harder to fix the problems that do sometimes exist in research because the tendency is to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

End of soapbox.

 

[thermodynamic]

Many corporations are just in it for the money, and if they can make and cheaply produce something that is "passable", that people won't know is deadly for decades, they will. It's up to people like us to point those things out.

Unfortunately, the most popular corporations are the ones with the best advertising, and the best taste, not the best product.

It's sad, but more and more circumstantial evidence makes what you say closer to a truism than just a passing, fly-by-night unethical entity. And it is the lack of ethics, not the concept OF business, that makes people upset over business or even "anti-business" as the faddish spun phrase has come to be...

 

[lexx510]

I know this is an old thread but worth commenting on.
We also like Dr. Harvey's because of the bee pollen.
I so worry about ingredients in bird food. Tops is CERTIFIED Organic. Natural just doesn't cut it these days. It is a trick word for food whether human or animal.

"Organic" is a marketing term much like "natural." Sadly, a product that has been certified organic isn't necessarily healthier, but is certainly pricier.

See article for more info:
Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture | Science Sushi, Scientific American Blog Network

Organic or not, I've made a habit of looking at the actual ingredients. I prefer Tops pellets for their nutrient rich wholesome ingredients as opposed to additives, synthetic vitamins, etc.

 

[DebsFlock]

"Organic" is a marketing term much like "natural." Sadly, a product that has been certified organic isn't necessarily healthier, but is certainly pricier.

See article for more info:
Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture | Science Sushi, Scientific American Blog Network

I'm going to quibble a bit here -- the article is informative and from a trustworthy source, but it does NOT say the organic certification is meaningless -- it does point out some of the misconceptions and limitations of it. Right now it is the ONLY label in the US that has ANY meaning at all, there are conditions that a product has to meet and there are inspections and so forth.

Natural is a label anyone can use with absolutely no conditions or verification. There is a difference.

 

[evesta]

I buy roudybush because that's the best pellets I can find locally. Lafabers, zupreme, and kaytee are the others. My birds won't go near the zupreme natural but adore roudybush. Organic stuff is hard to come by here too so my boys eat lots of regular veggies and fruits, many frozen. We don't all have natural food and pet food stores around the corner

 

[lexx510]

"Organic" is a marketing term much like "natural." Sadly, a product that has been certified organic isn't necessarily healthier, but is certainly pricier.

See article for more info:
Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture | Science Sushi, Scientific American Blog Network

I'm going to quibble a bit here -- the article is informative and from a trustworthy source, but it does NOT say the organic certification is meaningless -- it does point out some of the misconceptions and limitations of it. Right now it is the ONLY label in the US that has ANY meaning at all, there are conditions that a product has to meet and there are inspections and so forth.

Natural is a label anyone can use with absolutely no conditions or verification. There is a difference.

Very true, Deb. It's just hard to trust most companies and organizations these days - take FDA for example. I've learned to do my own research and study the ingredients before purchasing most products, regardless of whether the labeled states organic, natural, or "made in heaven." lol

 

[DebsFlock]

Yeah. The problem is that it's actually hard to do good research and in some ways the internet makes it harder. There is so much information -- and so much of it is bad! There are websites that look at first glance very scholarly, but then it turns out that all the references are to a self-published monograph that the self-same person who authored the website wrote, etc. If I didn't have access to journals through a campus library I would feel as if I was missing an important tie point to reality. And I don't have time to research everything to that extent.

By and large I think most agencies like the FDA are mostly trying to do the right thing. They can be swayed by lobbyists and other outside influences, but there is no point working for an organization like that unless you are in it to try to do the right thing. You make more money in industry. So I trust.... but verify... up to a point. I've seen the pendulum swing back and forth so many times in my lifetime. Eggs are a great case in point.. first they were "the perfect food", full of high quality protein and low in calories. then they were the consummate evil in food, all that cholesterol, all that fat! Give the yolks to someone you hate! Now they are considered healthy again, and the fats a good source of essential fatty acids, with the dietary link to blood cholesterol increasingly weak!

I suspect we may see something similar with preservatives. At first they were an incredible breakthrough, they made the storage of food much, much safer. Currently they are much maligned, although most of the research is still inconclusive. However, we are seeing more and more cases of people suffering from severe food poisoning in foods that are preservative free.... it's not always easy to see the lesser of the evils when you're in the middle of the fray.

So my motto is moderation in everything (including moderation), variety, and a healthy dose of skepticism. YMMV.

 

[dishgal1]

Yeah. The problem is that it's actually hard to do good research and in some ways the internet makes it harder. There is so much information -- and so much of it is bad! There are websites that look at first glance very scholarly, but then it turns out that all the references are to a self-published monograph that the self-same person who authored the website wrote, etc. If I didn't have access to journals through a campus library I would feel as if I was missing an important tie point to reality. And I don't have time to research everything to that extent.

By and large I think most agencies like the FDA are mostly trying to do the right thing. They can be swayed by lobbyists and other outside influences, but there is no point working for an organization like that unless you are in it to try to do the right thing. You make more money in industry. So I trust.... but verify... up to a point. I've seen the pendulum swing back and forth so many times in my lifetime. Eggs are a great case in point.. first they were "the perfect food", full of high quality protein and low in calories. then they were the consummate evil in food, all that cholesterol, all that fat! Give the yolks to someone you hate! Now they are considered healthy again, and the fats a good source of essential fatty acids, with the dietary link to blood cholesterol increasingly weak!

I suspect we may see something similar with preservatives. At first they were an incredible breakthrough, they made the storage of food much, much safer. Currently they are much maligned, although most of the research is still inconclusive. However, we are seeing more and more cases of people suffering from severe food poisoning in foods that are preservative free.... it's not always easy to see the lesser of the evils when you're in the middle of the fray.

So my motto is moderation in everything (including moderation), variety, and a healthy dose of skepticism. YMMV.

Absolutely right on. And don't forget butter, remember when oleo was better for us? Now as we always figured, hydrogenated is really bad for cholesterol.............then we have to be aware of the latest culprit....GMO genetically modified food. That will be the downfall of us all. It is harder and harder to get heirloom seeds nowadays.

 

[DebsFlock]

Absolutely right on. And don't forget butter, remember when oleo was better for us? Now as we always figured, hydrogenated is really bad for cholesterol............

Yep, that's another good one!