Saturday, April 26, 2008 |
Giving birds vitamins (in a way they love)
I have sworn by Hagen Prime because of the mixture of vitamins in it as well as the fact that it also provides amino acids and other things that birds need which most supplements don't include. My cockatiel has always been especially picky with eating and I had resorted to mixing Prime in all of my birds' water dishes but it can sometimes create an unpleasant odor after some time and with 2 of my 3 birds loving to dunk their food in their water it got ugly after less than a day at times. I tried putting the powder on top of certain treats but they were smart enough to eat around the powder. I finally came to this conclusion.Get a slice of bread (See Note Below) and sprinkle about a tablespoon of Hagen Prime all over the slice and then rub it in with your fingers making sure that the entire face of the bread is covered. Seal the slice in a zip lock bag and leave it sit for at least a few hours or overnight. Because of the contents of the powder and the moisture in the bread the soluable parts of the Prime work their way into the bread reducing the areas that the bird can eat around. Once it's disolved overnight you can break off a small peice of the bread and feed it to your bird and then refrigerate the rest in the zip lock bag. Important notes about bread: First of all it is important to understand that bread it's self has health benefits for birds such as calcium and fiber, however, you have to remember that most breads contain yeast and will generally expand in the stomach. Because of this you do not want to feed your bird a large amount of bread. If you were to give your bird an entire slice of bread he may eat more than he should. This is especially true with smaller birds such as cockatiels. Secondly, you can use pretty much any bread for this that you'd like but I use Potato bread for a couple of reasons (other than the fact that I usually have it). Because of the potato mixture of the bread it remains lighter and fluffier and holds moisture longer. As a result it absorbs the prime better than white bread (as far as I've noticed). I'm sure there are some wild opinions on the use of certain types of bread because of sugars and such. In my opinion, however, the amount of sugars and other "non-healthy" substances in a tiny peice of bread is low enough that it won't make much difference. My birds absolutely love this, seemingly even more than plain bread at times. The Prime does have a pleasant scent and taste for birds so I'm sure that helps. Any comments on this are welcomed! If you have birds and try this, please leave a comment and let me know how they like it. Labels: avian, birds, cockatiels, food, minerals, parrots, treats, vitamins (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
Friday, April 25, 2008 |
Lisa layed eggs
It seems there always something new around the corner to be learned and its funny how sometimes you know things can and probably will happen but you seem unconcerned until it does happen. The last couple of days Lisa had been acting.... well, just not herself. Today I took her outside for a while and she was a lot more aggitated than she had been before.... when I took her in to the bird room she flew to her cage -- which is somewhat odd. I just now noticed that back in the corner of the cage there are 2 eggs that she had layed. This explains a lot.A little information about cockatiels is that they usually will still lay unfertile eggs even if they don't have a mate and, as with a human mother, this is an emotional period. The thing that I need to do is figure out if she realizes that the eggs are unfertile or not. Even if she does know it its important to allow her to become bored and uninterested before I remove the eggs. Its crazy.... *I* feel bad that they arent fertile eggs. It would be totally awesome to have little baby cockatiels but that would, of course, be a lot of work for me if I wanted to hand feed them. Should be an interesting week or so for me.... Labels: birds, cockatiels, eggs, lisa (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
(C)2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved
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