Hoi,
Hier even een stukje info over pellets uit het boek "The Parrots Breeders answer book" uit de serie Barron's educational series.
Seed diets
By now you have probably come to relize that seed-only diet is insufficient and downright negectful. Adding a few fruits and vegetables is an improvement but will still not cover all the nutritional bases, especially for breeding birds and their fast growing offspring. For example, seeds, fruits, and many vegetables are notoriously low in calcium, so a bird on such diet is almost quarainteed a calcium deficiency (hypocalcemia) unless supplemental calcium is added. To make matters worse, fatty accids, phytates, and oxalates, present in grains, and some vegetables bind with calcium and further inhibit absorption.
Calcium also works synergistically with phosphorus. The two must be available in proper rations for optimal function. In parrots that ratio approximately 2:1 ( two parts calcium per one part phosphorus) for maintenance and perhaps slightly higher during active eg-laying. Many of the commonly fed items in a bird's diet are high in phosphorus and low or absent in calsium. Including sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, peanuts, corn, apples, and grapes. Sunflower seeds for example have approximately seven parts of phosphorus to one part of calcium, and safflower and peanuts are not much better.
I frequently run into old-time breeders who insist that they have used a seed-based diet for years and years and their birds are doing just fine. Of course, they had that hen that died from egg binding, and the baby's with splayed legs, and their 15-year-old Amazone with arthritis and liver troubles, and a cockatoo that died from a hart attack, and so on. These people don't seem to understand that these are largery nutritional diseases. Most medium-to-large parrots should live well into their forties or fifties or beyond without any significant degenerative diseases. A seed based diet usually will not kill a parrot quickly, but you can be certain that this diet will kill it slowly and insidiously.
Besides the above mentioned problem with calcium and phosphorus, seed diets are also deficient in vitamins A, D3, E, K, several of the B-complex vitamins, certain amino accids, and serveral trace elements. They are exstremely high in fat and can negatively affect the absorption of some nutrients. Bij adding a carefully chosen mix of fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products and vitamin and mineral supplements, you might be able to offer your birds a fair diet, provided, ofcourse, that they eat everything in the mix completely. In reality, Birds will choose their favorite items, and the diet becomes imbalanced and inadequate.
Formulated (pelleted) diet
A simple answer exists- to offer your birds a formulated diet. These diets were devolped after years of researche about avian nutricien. formulated parrots diets come in two forms, pelleted and extruded, althought that most people in the avian community use the term pellets to refer to both types. In general, true pellets consist of a mixture of coarsely ground grains and other food products, supplemented with vitamins and minerals, and pressed into hard, cylindrical pieces. These diets tend to be tan or light brown in color and have a natural grain aroma. Extruded diets begin with much the same ingrdients, wich are then finally ground, cooked to enhance digestibility, and forced through a die and shaped in a process called extrusion. Extruded brands often contain flavorings and colourings. They are available in a wide variety of shapes, colors and sizes. For the sake of simplicity, the term pellets will be used to refer to both types of formulated foods even thought extruded diets are more common these days. Both of these diets are based on the same consept as dry dog and catfood, witch is to previde complete and balanced nutrition in each bite.
Detractors offer three main arguments against feeding pellets. First, they claim that no such thing as a complete diet exists sinse no one yet fully understands parrot nutrition. Althought this is true, the same argument can be applied towards any diet. Over the years, pellet manufacters have tweaked and fiddled with the diets constantly as research suggest methods for improvement.
The second argument waged agianst pellets is that they are unnatural. Actually, most of the ingredients found in pellets are food items for parrots, albeit in a processed form. Today's common seed mixes, on the other hand, tend to use a number of seeds and grains that are not normally found in the range countries of most parrots. More importantly, people need to get over romanticized that they should replicate the natural diet of birds in the wild.
The final argument against pellets is that they are boring and fail to offer taste and tactile stimulation to the bird. Because pellets look boring to poeple, people asume they are boring to parrots. First of all, parrots are creatures of habit, and will often choose to eat one food to the near exclusion of others. Therefor, lack of choise does not nexesserily imply boredom. Secondly, parrots do not have the same sense of taste that humans possess, so gauging taste preferenses is very dificult. Althought birds might show strong preferences for one food over the othe, these pereferences could be due to familiarity, taste, color, shape, size, or many other factors.
Althought most avian researches veterinairians, and nutritionist seem to concur that a formulated diet is essential for a long life and optimal health, it need not be the only food your birds eat. Between 20 t 30 % of the diet can be made of fruits/ seeds, nuts, grains, and people food. Keep in mind, however, that this means that roughly 70 to 80 % of the bird's intake must be the formulated diet. I usually feed an assotiment of pellets free choise (available at all times) and offer small amounts of fruits, vegetables or other treats as a snack late in the morning.......................
Het gaat nog wel even verder maar wil je meer weten, koop het boek dan.
"The parrot Breeder's Answer Book"by Barron's isbn nr 0764116959 147 pagina's.
gr corina
