food.htm

3of3.jpg (9421 bytes) What is bird food? 3tiels.jpg (12002 bytes)

Bird food can be anything that is considered to be healthy and nutritious for a bird to thrive. If you think that feeding a bird just bird seed is what it needs to live, then your going to have a dead bird in a few short years.

Many birds are known to have long life spans, and that is determined on how their diets are. But how do you switch a bird from eating just bird seed?

Here at Borrowed Rainbow, we have received birds from people that all they have ever eaten is just bird seed. It is a slow process to convert a seed eater to pellets, or chunks.

The bird can not be taken away from it's current diet "cold turkey". We have found that it's best to gradually introduce the new diet to the bird. Our first priority is to introduce pellets. They are gradually mixed with the seed over several weeks. We start out by feeding 10% pellets, then gradually mix more pellets into the dish until 60% is pellets. By that time the bird will have had the chance to eat them and knows what they are.

After several weeks we will take the seed out of the cage and only give them seed occasionally as a treat.

Even with all this planning and patience, some birds simply do not want anything to do with pellets. You will have to do some experimentation of other foods to find out what your bird will eat. I have read stories from other breeders that feed their birds a mix of pasta, beans, fruit, and an assortment of other vegetables. Birds can be very picky about new foods that are offered to them. They may pick at it, play with it, stare at it, until they decide if it is something that they want to eat. Birds choose their food more on appearance then taste

We have used Pet Warehouse to supply our Aviary with foods and supplies. With them your shipments arrive faster then any other company that we have ever ordered from. So check them out. Check out the banners below. These are the companies from where we recommend you get your bird their food. We use Kaytee, Lafeber and Zupreem on all of our birds. These companies care about pet birds and have excellent foods for all types of pet birds.