Amazon parrot pellets (homemade)

[lovefrasier]

I have adopted an Amazon Parrot a few months ago, who's a seed-aholic... pretty bad, too.
We are trying to wean him off seeds and get him more on a pellet-based diet per his avian vet
I bought a bag of RoudyBush pellets but he doesn't like them. After looking on the back of the bag, I noticed that the top ingredients are ground wheat, ground corn, soy meal, soy oil and then it's all tons of chemicals. I don't want to feed him chemicals so yesterday I made a small batch of homemade pellets on my food processor. I used baby spinach, walnuts (his favorite), almonds, wheat germ, dried cranberries and whole wheat bread.
I took out the store-bought pellets and replaced them with these and he likes them.

My question for bird/parrot experts out there is, is this okay (with the ingredients I listed above) to replace the store-bought pellets with?

if not, what are the main ingredients that he needs to eat every day?

(He also has a separate dish for fresh, healthy foods every day)

Thank you!

-Krissie
Frasier's mommy

 

[henpecked]

I too have tried making my own pellets. Extruded and dried , the birds loved them and so long as i don't make too much , i did have some go rancid in the freezer. The issue is ,are we including all of the trace elements,vitamins and minerals that the commerical pellets contain. The commerical pellets are SUPPOSED to contain everything needed for a "complete" diet. I don't know exactly what that is and how much to include in my "homemade" pellets. I still make my own pellets(in small batches) but use them more as training treats or just a healthy treat. I don't make the traditional "birdie bread" but find, me and the fids love the extruded homemade pellets.I'll never use them to replace daily maintenance pellets.

 

[MikeyTN]

I'm with henpecked there! It doesn't matter how you make them your not adding in the essential additive needed for their balanced diet needs.

 

[lovefrasier]

Thank you so much for responding, henpecked and MikeyTN... but Mikey, that is exactly what I am asking to parrot experts out there.
What, then, DO I need to include to make a healthy diet that an Amazon Parrot needs to eat every day?
For one thing, he does NOT eat the store-bought pellets.
He does eat the ones I make.
So what is it in the store-bought ones (I found four ingredients besides a long list of preservatives.

What can I add to my list of ingredients to make these pellets healthy for him? I can whip up a batch every 2 days so they stay fresh.

Otherwise, I am afraid he will not get a proper diet due to his aversion to RoudyBush and (another brand, I can't remember) pellets.

 

[torrap]

I think baby food adds a lot of vitamins and nutrients, but it might look more like "birdy bread". I have heard people using "birdy bread" instead of pellets. Some people crush pellets and mix them into "birdy bread". I find my birds not touching pellets but eating "birdy bread". My recipe included 4 jars of baby food, so I know they are getting vitamins and nutrients. Maybe I am wrong, but I figured "birdy bread" plus all kinds of fresh fruit and veggies, sprouts, cooked beans and pasta, some fish and eggs once in a while......and my birds should be OK.
You can try to get Harrison's pellets, they should have less chemicals I think, but my birds don't eat them either....
I have to try to crush them into scrambled eggs, didn't get around to do that yet. My birds can kill for scrambled eggs.....

 

[MikeyTN]

You can feed what you make but just make sure you give fresh fruits and veggies to compliment the rest. Also cook for them and there's plenty of cooking recipes on here of all the food people make on here for their birds. There's so many stuffs you can cook for them to really bypass the needs of pellets. As long as your willing to take the time to do all the cooking. Just make sure everything is pretty fresh if you decide to go this route.

 

[jakrob4]

Your bird will eat pellets if you try hard enough, there is many different techniques of weaning them onto them if you search the internet. Unfortunately those chemicals you don't want to feed your bird are about the only nutritious thing in those pellets. They use "ground wheat, ground corn, soy meal and soy oil" because they are the cheapest source of protein and fat and not much else.
It is impossible to make a pellet with every needed nutrient without adding chemicals. You can supplement with hard boiled eggs for vitamin B12, Sunlight for Vitamin D and a source of calcium like calcium carbonate.

The water soluble vitamins are the B complex as well as Vitamin C. These vitamins such as thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pyridoxine, etc., can not be stored in the animal because they are soluble in water. They must be in the diet on a continuous basis.
The fat soluble vitamins are known as vitamins A, D, E and K.
Because in the bird they are stored in association with fat, it usually takes an extended period of time to develop a deficiency when the diet has a very low fat soluble vitamin content. However, deficiencies can and do exist in pet birds, especially when the owners are not providing the bird with enough variety of feedstuffs in the diet. The ability of fat soluble vitamins to be stored has its advantages, but this ability also has its disadvantages. The possibility of hypervitaminosis exists. In other words, the fat soluble vitamins can be toxic if consumed in large amounts - This rarely happens if using real food as your source of nutrients.
It is also very important that you maintain a 1:1 to 2:1 calcium to phosphorous (Ca) ratio. This is very hard as most plant foods contain phytic acid along with the phosphorous making only about 40% of the phosphorous available. You also have foods high in oxalic acid like spinach for example that binds with the calcium making it unavailable as well.
You also must ensure they are receiving all of the essential amino acids in high enough quantities. Most plant foods don't contain all of the essential amino acids making them incomplete proteins. Soy beans and hemp seeds are complete proteins but soy also has trypsin inhibitors meaning it must be prepared properly for it to be safe.

I wouldn't recommend feeding any wheat products to parrots whatsoever. Spinach is quite nutritious but not in large daily doses due to the oxalic acid. Nuts are also healthy but due to the large amounts of fat should only be fed sparingly. If your bird is unclipped and very active it can eat a fattier diet. Dried cranberries are not very nutritious as many of the antioxidants are lost in the drying process and they are mostly sugar to begin with. Also if the cranberries or any dried fruit aren't organic or a sulfur free option they are detrimental to a birds health.

My apologies for going against your efforts but feeding a balanced diet does require a fair bit of research. I know you can pull it off but be prepared to spend a fair bit of time preparing fresh foods and I wouldn't bother trying to put them in pellet form. Preparing a cooked rice/grain/veggie mix and freezing it into daily serves is a popular option. The key to a healthy diet is variety.

Here is the ingredients of the pellet I have been developing for the past year to give you some ideas.
Organic Hemp Protein powder (extracted without chemicals)
Rice
Quinoa
Green Peas
Hulled Barley
Hulled Millet
Lentils
Buckwheat
Broccoli Sprout Freeze Dried Powder
Carrot Freeze Dried Powder
Barley Grass Freeze Dried Powder
Apple Freeze Dried Powder
Blueberry Freeze Dried Powder
Ginger Freeze Dried Powder
Dandelion Leaf
Alfalfa Leaf
Sunflower Seeds
Sesame Seeds
Chia Seeds
Spirulina
Sea kelp
Purple dulse
Mangosteen Freeze Dried Powder
Rose hip Granules
Crushed Red Chili
Rosemary Leaf
Orange Peel
Lemon Peel
Nettle Leaf
Rose hip Powder
Cayenne Pepper
Himalayan Crystalline Salt
Montmorillonite Clay
Dicalcium Phosphate
Calcium Carbonate
Cyanocobalamine ( B12 )
Cholecalciferol ( D3 )
D - Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate ( Natural Vit E supplement )

 

[henpecked]

Like the knowledgeable fellow posted above, " Variety is best". I have lots of amazons ,some i raised from babies but most came from other places . All of my birds eat commercial pellets.(most any brand as i change around often) Most came to me on a seed diet and i converted them to pellets. At best daily maintenance pellets make up 50% of my zons diet.I feed lots of fresh veggies,sprouts and some fruits,nuts and seeds (Hemp,Milk Thistle,etc). There are several threads in the forum about converting to a pellet diet. You may find size of pellets can be a factor as well as brand.

 

[JerseyWendy]

Perhaps THIS link will be helpful for you in converting your Amazon to a different, more healthy diet.
http://www.parrotforums.com/general-health-care/23367-converting-parrots-healthier-diet-tips.html

 

[Pajarita]

You are absolutely correct. Pellets are not the best dietary option for parrots. As to the 'complete nutrition' claim on the label, it's nothing but a marketing gimmick, pure and simple, because nobody knows the dietary needs of parrots. Not yet, anyway.

I feed organic gloop instead of pellets because:
- pellets are never more than 10% moisture when parrots have a digestive system meant for food that has 85 to 95% water
- it's nothing but dead food to which they added lab-made vitamins and minerals (which we are now finding out more and more don't have the same bio-availability of the natural, food-derived ones)
- they are boring in taste while parrots do better with strong and different flavors (they have only 300-400 taste buds)
- they are made with animal-feed materials (I worked in a grain company and can tell you that animal-feed grains are hugely inferior to human-grade, even the organic ones)
- you don't know how much protein you are feeding (no manufacturer lists the actual content on the label - not a single one!)
- they have ZERO phytonutrients (needed for disease and organ degeneration prevention)
- the fiber they add (remember, this is highly processed food so the natural fiber is no longer present) cannot be used by parrots (there are studies that prove this)
- you don't know where the ingredients come from (lots buy from China because it's cheap and we all know how dangerous this can be)

I feed gloop, a dish made out of organic ingredients I buy from US sources: cooked whole grains, beans, seeds and veggies. I use wheat, oat, barley, brown rice and kamut. I cook them al dente and add flax seed (for the omega 3), small white beans (no other kind except for the cockatoos that get some garbanzo beans) and, right before and during molt (like right now), sesame seed (for the methionine).

These are the veggies (fresh and cooked by myself or frozen because they have no salt and they are more nutritious than canned) I add:

Sweet potatoes (most nutritious if baked in the skin): vit A, vit C, vit E, vit B6, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid, iron, copper and manganese.

Tomatoes (I cook the grains in tomato paste): vit C, vit A, vit B6, vit K, thiamine, niacin, folate, potassium, manganese, copper, phosphorus and magnesium

Carrots: vit A, vit C, vit E, vit K, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vit B6, folic acid, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, zinc.

Corn: vit A, vit C, vit E, vit B6, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, thiamine, niacin, iron, zinc, potassium, magnesium

Green Beans: vit A, vit C, vit K, folate, thiamin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, pyridoxine, potassium, manganese, calcium, iron.


Broccoli: vit A, vit C, vit E, vit K, folate, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, thiamine, pyridoxine, potassium, manganese, calcium, iron, copper, magnesium, selenium, zinc.

And these are some of the phytonutrients these veggies have: lycopene, carotene B, thiocyanates, indoles, sulforaphane, isohiocunanates, cryptoxanthin, lutein, zea-xanthin and the carotenes.

This becomes the basic recipe which I freeze in daily portions, thaw every day and add the daily flavor which means more veggies or fruits and seasonings - like raisins, currants, dry figs, dates, naturally dried apple and low sugar pineapple bits, sun-dried tomatoes (can't add fresh, it makes everything too watery but they eat the raw ones as the daily veggie they also get along with a fruit and a leafy green), peppers (green, red, orange, yellow as well as hot ones), black olives, artichokes, grated unsweetened coconut, baby corn, palm hearts, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, beets, cinnamon, honey, ginger, chili powder, oregano, garlic, etc

So, go ahead, experiment and come up with your own recipe. It can't help but to be hugely superior nutrition than pellets. People used to be stuck on seeds and meat for their parrots, now they are stuck on pellets but this too will come to pass and change for the better, same as general husbandry, cages, lights, etc has changed. Sheesh, we used to keep them in terrible conditions (bad food, small cages with round dowels, no toys, etc) and look how much things have changed in just 20 years! Gives a body hope, it does.

 

[lovefrasier]

oh my goodness!

Thank you everyone for the wonderful WEALTH of information!

I do feed him a wide variety of fresh foods at least 2x a day... his fresh food dish gets cleaned out and replaced with different types of fresh foods.

I do not mind cooking for him at all.
He's a disabled bird (someone basically beat the daylights out of him (we're guessing) and now he has one wing and just recovered from a broken leg and clipped off beak - jerks!) so he can't fly or get the exercise that normal birds can which is why it's so much more important that I provide my sweet guy with an excellent well-balanced diet.

I cook organically for my dogs so cooking for him wouldn't be an issue at all. But he's so picky! He only likes scrambled eggs, walnuts, green apples (sometimes pears) but the good thing is he will nibble at the other fruits and veggies I've offered, the occasional piece of potato, zucchini, squash... I know it's true what you all say... keep trying, just because he doesn't like it today doesn't mean that's true for the next day.

He is slowly weaning off of birdseed. Yay!
I have a question for all of you parrot experts out there: is it okay to give him birdseed VERY occasionally as a treat/reward or now that he is starting to live without it, should I just stop offering it? Will that confuse him?

Pajarita, I love your idea of the gloop! Thank you for sharing that gloop idea. I just don't know how tartaric acide and magnesium sulfalate can be okay for them but then again, I've only had him for < 2 months so I don't know too much about birds in general. But that is why I stopped feeding my dogs store-brand food and moved them to an organic recipe that I make myself.

Just want to give him the best possible.
I'm now feeding him my own recipe of "pellets" (what I have left) plus his store-bought pellets (I have a huge bag left!)

I am going to look into all of your suggestions.

Sorry for rambling and again, thank you ALL. You've all be SO helpful! Thanks for assisting me with this transition.

Thanks again!

 

[Hayden1987]

Find out what seeds haven't been heat treated/sterilized and will sprout, dried seed is really not good for any parrot. Try soaking your seed and feed the sprouts... much more nutritious. But be aware that mould and fungi grows incredibly fast... even in the fridge
There is heaps of info on the net about sprouting seed.