Chapter 5 – Proper Feeding
Want more FREE books?
Get thousands more at Freebiesave.org!
In nature, budgies are ground feeders who eat the small seeds of several Australian grasses; they rarely eat anything else unless desperate during droughts. Seeds provide wild budgies the high levels of fat they need to travel from place to place in search of water and food. Your pet budgie will prefer seeds over pelleted diets the same way a child may prefer french fries over a baked potato. If given in good variety along with a broad-based vitamin supplement, high quality seeds could serve as a stable diet. However, the reality today is that seeds bought in stores are not always reliable foods; they may be old by the time you buy them, may be contaminated with insects and mold, and are not necessarily a complete food. Some seed mixes contain only the cheapest seeds, including red millet and even rice, which budgies seldom eat. Yes, your budgie could exist just on seeds, but she won't live as long or be as healthy as she could be.
Pelleted Diets
Start by feeding your budgie the diet she was getting in the pet store. If the store was offering only seed, then gradually introduce pellets. Each pellet has all the proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals required, eliminating the need for additional vitamins. Pelleted diets come in a great variety of sizes, shapes, and colors, and many mixtures are manufactured specifically for budgies. If your bird was not weaned onto a pelleted diet at the pet store, she may take a while to decide which colors or sizes she prefers; expect some waste for the first several weeks when you present the new food. Take the time to see what she likes, and never try to starve a bird into accepting a new food.
You should still provide high-quality seeds at each meal--about 50 percent of the total offered at first--and then gradually reduce the amount of seed over two to four weeks. Veterinarians recommend a diet that is 85 to 90 percent pellets and 10 to 15 percent seed and other treats (which can include healthy human foods such as vegetables and pasta). Ask your veterinarian about the proper proportions for your individual bird, based on her current weight and general health.
Although pellets represent a large portion of your budgie's diet, seeds, along with fresh vegetables, should also be offered.
If you feed a diet of roughly 80 percent pellets (and your budgie actually eats the pellets), do not add vitamin supplements to the diet. This could lead to overdoses of several different vitamins, a condition called hypervitaminosis, that could be dangerous or even fatal. Pelleted diets already have vitamins added and don't need extras. They also generally have enough calcium for all but laying hens.
Budgies will live well on just pellets, but they also seem to enjoy seeds as a form of entertainment. Some pellet manufacturers have begun including a healthful ratio of seeds in the same packages as their pelleted diets, providing just the right amount of fat and a bit of fun.
Greens, Vegetables, and Fruit
Your budgie will enjoy daily servings of greens and other vegetables. The simplest way to give greens is to hang a carrot top or a fresh leaf of spinach, kale, or dandelion from the top of the cage; you can use a special clip sold in stores or just a wooden clothespin (not plastic). If you mist the leaf before you place it in the cage, the budgie will be drawn to it both as food and as a source of water. If you prefer, you may tear up a leaf and add it to your budgie's normal food mix; just be sure to remove the leaf and replace the mix after just a few hours because the moisture from the leaf may cause bacteria to grow.
Some budgies will eat grated carrot, which is an excellent source of carotenes; carotenes will give your bird brighter yellow and green colors. You can also offer your budgie chopped bell peppers (from mild to spicy varieties), chunks of broccoli, and even very small amounts of cooked (and cooled) sweet potato. A piece of unsalted and unbuttered air-popped popcorn is another excellent low-fat treat, and it is something that many budgies seem to find very fun to nibble.
Fruits and vegetables are great for budgies. Many human foods, such as avocados, onions, and chocolate, are simply not healthy for birds, so choose wisely.
Budgies have big appetites, but make sure your offerings are size-appropriate. Consult your avian veterinarian about the right food portions for your bird.
All About Seeds
The seeds usually offered to parrots fall into two broad groups: low fat and high fat. Both seeds should be included in a mix, although 75 percent of the mix should be low-fat seeds to prevent the budgie from becoming overweight. During the winter (if the budgie is kept outdoors) and during periods of stress, including mating and laying, a larger amount of high-fat seeds (commonly called oil seeds) can be given so the budgie has more energy and can store up some fat.
How Parrots Eat Seeds
All parrots have very strong beaks. They use these mighty beaks to open hard nuts and to hull their seeds before they are swallowed. As noted earlier, the tip of the budgie's lower beak is squared off and fits into a series of fine ridges under the tip of the upper beak. The tongue is a thick, specialized organ with small projections that allow it to hold an individual seed in position between the tip of the lower beak and the ridges of the upper. The tongue rolls the seed against the beak until one of the ridges makes a small break in the seed coating; further rolling strips the coat off the seed so the nutritious inner parts are exposed. The hull is spit out and the body of the seed is swallowed. This eliminates both the need for an extremely muscular crop and the need to swallow small mineral particles (often called grit) to hull the seed after it is swallowed.
Budgies hull their seeds individually, leaving a thick layer of empty hulls in their seed cups. One reason to feed your budgie twice a day is to remove the hulls so the bird can always reach fresh seeds.
Like all parrots, budgies have specialized beaks and tongues that allow them to fully hull each seed before ingesting it.
LOW-FAT (STARCHY) SEEDS
In low-fat seeds, most of the nutrition comes from carbohydrates (starches and sugars), which may make up 55 to 65 percent of the weight. Another 10 to 15 percent comes from proteins, with just 4 to 10 percent coming from fats. Low-fat seeds have good levels of fat-soluble vitamin E plus generally high levels of the water-soluble B vitamin complex. They also have adequate amounts of calcium and other minerals.
Canary Seed: This little pale brown seed generally forms the basis of many budgie mixes, along with millets. Although it takes many canary seeds to make a meal, they are nutritionally excellent.
Oats: Familiar as a grain used in many human cereals and breads, oats are an important budgie food as well. Although relatively inexpensive, oats are nutritious and easily digested. All mixes containing oats (especially the prehulled seeds known as groats) must be kept dry and tightly closed, or they will go bad by absorbing moisture from the air.
Millets: Many different types of millets are grown around the world for animal foods (as sorghum); but those generally found in the better budgie mixes are the small, round, white types often called proso and pearl millets. The coarse red millets apparently taste bad to many birds and are simply rejected, so any mixes with obviously large amounts of red millet are not good buys. Millet sprays are one of a budgie's favorite foods and can be given as treats in half-inch lengths (great as rewards during training) or hung from a convenient and clean spot in the cage for a late-day snack. Try not to give too many sprays, however, as eventually they are turned to fat, and your bird may come to prefer them over better, more varied foods.
HIGH-FAT (OILY) SEEDS
High-fat seeds, which may be quite large, are excellent for growing birds and ill birds, but they contain too much fat to be used as more than a small percentage of the entire mix. These seeds may consist of 40 percent fat or more, with lots of protein and very few carbohydrates. Owners of outdoor birds may feed fatty seeds often during the winter—when they are needed to provide quick metabolic heat--and in small quantities during the summer.
Sunflower Seeds: You can harvest sunflower seeds from flowers raised in your own garden, but you will need lots of plants and will end up with only a few seeds because they are picked by wild birds and squirrels before they ripen. Budgies will hull sunflower seeds, but they much prefer to feed on the hulled hearts or chips, leading quickly to weight gain. Sunflower seeds contain roughly 45 percent oils and 25 percent proteins, with only a small amount of starch, so they are good for stressful situations and are often given to laying females and to budgies kept outdoors during winter. Because hearts are easy to digest and a good source of energy, they are commonly fed to sick birds.
Niger: These slender black seeds are about the size of canary seed, but they contain a large amount of oil (roughly 40 percent) and about 20 percent proteins; they are a good but a fattening food. Yes, a budgie can and will hull such tiny seeds. This is one of the most expensive seeds when purchased alone. Keep any mix with niger dry and in the dark to prevent the seeds from becoming rancid.
Flax: Also called linseed (and the source of linseed oil), flax seeds come from a plant that produces bright blue flowers and a fibrous stem used to manufacture linen cloth. The seeds are tiny but high in oil. Many budgies do not like flax seeds and reject them from a mix.
Rape Seed: These tiny seeds also are high in oil, but you seldom find them in American budgie mixes.
Rape is a type of commercially grown mustard that is important for feeding crops in some areas of Europe. These seeds are also a good source of minerals, and they contain about 50 percent fats.
Common seed mixes for budgies contain mostly canary seeds, proso millet, oat groats, and some sunflower chips, providing a good group of seeds at a reasonable price. When supplemented with a millet or foxtail spray and perhaps a few extra sunflower seeds, these mixes give your budgie a good variety. However, if you feed only seeds (which is strongly discouraged by most avian veterinarians), consider adding a good brand of vitamin supplement to the mix once a week. Just keep in mind that giving your bird too many additional vitamins is as dangerous as or more so than giving her too few, so consult with your veterinarian.
People Food
Your budgie will think of herself as part of the family and may want to try the things you eat. In many cases, this may not be safe or nutritious. Some foods that are safe for us are toxic to birds. Budgies can't digest many of the things we eat, and the salt, sugar, and fat found in many of our foods (especially processed foods) would be especially unhealthy to a budgie. One exception is cooked noodles of various types, which are often included in commercial bird food mixes that are designed to be cooked before being fed to a budgie. Offer them in only small amounts. There is no reason to offer your budgie meat, chicken, fish, or insects.
European budgie owners often supplement the diet of laying hens with such things as wheat bread soaked in milk (for extra calcium), boiled eggs (also given to young budgies), and yogurt. Budgies cannot digest milk, which causes diarrhea.
Yogurt can be used as a dietary supplement in very small amounts, however, as can finely chopped boiled egg. All these foods spoil quickly, so never mix them with seeds, or you will have to throw everything away in a few hours. Yogurt with active bacterial cultures, by the way, can be given to a budgie who has been on antibiotics; it helps regenerate the useful bacteria in the gut.
Foods to Avoid
Some foods are simply not safe to feed to budgies.
One of the worst is unsweetened chocolate; it contains high levels of the chemical theobromine, which can cause death in a small bird. Avoid milk chocolate as well. Avocado pits contain a toxin, persin, which can cause death even in very small amounts. Sometimes the toxin leaks from the pit into the flesh next to it, making the whole fruit dangerous. To be safe, avoid avocado in all its forms and fruit pits of any type. Salty and sweet foods should also be avoided, along with wildflowers and most flowers from the garden. Fertilizers and insecticides should not be used near any plants that will be fed to budgies.
Does a Budgie Need Grit?
Grit is a finely ground calcium-rich material often derived from oyster shells or limestone rocks. It is meant to serve both as a source of calcium and to help grind tough seeds in the gizzard of a bird (specifically, a chicken). Budgies and other parrots, however, hull their seeds before swallowing them, so there is no need for having grit in the gizzard to grind the seeds. Giving grit to a young budgie can cause death if the bird eats too much and the grit stops up her crop. Today, the general advice is not to give grit to budgies.
This doesn't mean, however, that you can't give calcium and mineral supplements to your bird. Mineral blocks are widely sold in pet stores; at worst they seem harmless, and they might actually be of use for some birds. Many owners offer cuttlebones to their birds, especially laying females. Cuttlebones are the internal shells of a type of squid, and they are rich in calcium and other minerals. They also are heavy in salt, but the salt in a cuttlebone seems to do little harm. If you worry about salt, cut the shell into quarters to expose the soft material under the hard outer skin. Peel off the skin (a knife blade works well), and then soak the soft part of the shell in very hot water for a few minutes. (Don't soak it so long that mold could develop, of course.) Then dry it and either offer it in a holder or grind it up and add it to the seed mix.
Use the best mixes and foods, offered in the right portions, for a healthy bird.
Feeding Routines
Feed your budgie twice a day, early in the morning and early in the evening, in line with a budgie's natural feeding behaviors. The early evening feeding should be larger than the morning feeding, but typically a teaspoon of food will suffice. After an hour, check to see what has been eaten, and scoop off any seed hulls with a small spoon. Leave some food and a millet spray in the cage at night in case your budgie wakes and wants to feed a bit.
Offer fresh water when you offer the food. Generally speaking, if your home's water supply is safe for you, it is safe for your budgie. Still, some budgie owners feel more comfortable offering their birds bottled water or water that is filtered at the tap.
Don't overfeed your budgie, and don't make rapid changes in her diet. Budgies like routines and prefer that things stay the same; they don't adjust well to change. If you must make changes to her diet, do it gradually.
Want more FREE books?
Get thousands more at Freebiesave.org!