15/01/2023
Pellets and small seedeaters!
So this is something I’ve been experimenting with for the past several months, and while I am by no means done with my trials yet (lol), I’m also far enough along to make a post about it.
For as long as I’ve been working with them, I’ve always fed a fairly simple maintenance diet consisting mainly of a finch seed mix to my small seed eaters, which consists primarily of Australian finches and various grass parakeets. However after years of having to deal with seed husks everywhere, and the general frustration that comes from keeping things clean because of it, I decided to have a go with swapping everything over to pellets. Overall, it’s a decision that I have had few regrets about at this point!
Now the biggest thing I’ve noticed since swapping, is the mess has been reduced by an extremely significant amount. This is pleasant both in terms of a smaller workload for cleaning, but also very nice as I can much more accurately monitor food consumption, and observe f***l quality easily since there’s no seed husks to cover everything. Overall I find most birds will swap over fairly easily, I’ve had a few that took a while longer to figure things out, but on the whole every small finch or Hookbill in my collection has swapped over to a pellet diet now. It also really helps to have one or two birds that are already pellet trained in the same cage when swapping new birds over as well.
In terms of how the birds handle it, it definitely varies from brand to brand of pellet, but also there is some variation from individual to individual as well. I’ve had a handful of finches, and one or two grass parakeets, who despite transitioning and surviving, never truly thrived on pellets, and I’ve since switched those birds back to a seed diet. In the finches I find this usually manifests in birds that gorge themselves to the point of excess, their crops are always absolutely swollen full of pellets, and you’ll often see them sitting there struggling to adjust their crops since are so full. in grass parakeets, it manifests in birds that lose general feather condition, show slow regrowth of feathers during molt, and spend a lot more time eating than they should.
Beyond these few outliers though, most of the birds have done extremely well on the swap. Feather condition is fine, they’re moulting properly as they should, and although I have had limited breeding over the past year simply due to not setting birds up to breed, the few clutches I have raised out have been strictly reared on pellets plus my standard egg food mix I offer to all my breeding birds, and the chicks have grown strong and quickly, and have matured into perfect healthy adults.
Something I really want to touch on though with this, is the brand of pellet makes all the difference! So far, my favourite overall has been the Mazuri mini bird diet. It’s not dyed so it’s easy to see the actual color of the birds p**p, the birds eat it well, and Mazuri is a very reputable brand that’s been around for a long time, with well trialed feed testing. My only very minor complaint is that I find the birds have slightly runnier droppings while they are on it. Not to the point of being concerned about it, but definitely noticeably softer than when they are on a seed diet. Next would be the Zupreem fruit blend. The birds enjoy it and I would say it’s comparable to the Mazuri in terms of how the birds do on it, but it does dye their p**p orange, and there’s also a lot of liquid in addition to the solid matter in their p**p.
NutriBird is middle of the road. The birds do very well on it, BUT it dyes their p**p super green, and their p**p also gets very mushy and seems to track EVERYWHERE, so the time I save by not having to clean up seed husks instead goes into constantly cleaning off perches and other cage fixtures. I find there’s also a bit of variety in the pellet size, and sometimes they’re on the bigger end of what the birds are able to comfortably handle, especially for the finches.
Next is the petsmart brand “all living things”. This stuff is absolute crap, and I do not recommend it whatsoever. It killed two of my grass parakeets, and almost killed several more that are still recovering from the damage it did to them. The finches seem to handle it well enough, and I fed the remainder to my larger hookbills and they all did ok with it (albeit it was only offered to them for about a week before it was all used up) but my grass parakeets did not agree with this food very well whatsoever. All of them lost weight and overall body condition on it despite eating well. I’ve never seen a food that the birds did so poorly on, and so abruptly, and this is the food that will definitely NOT be trialled her again.
Lastly, I would like to touch on the newest food I’ve tried. It’s the pretty bird daily select mini pellet, and so far, I’m very impressed with it! I like the pellets themselves, they’re very small and uniform in shape, and moreover, it seems to agree with the birds extremely well! Overall, I’m seeing f***l quality that’s closest in line to what the birds were producing while on a seed diet, and it doesn’t seem to noticeably dye their p**p any strong colors. I’ve only started feeding this food recently, but I have a strong feeling that this might end up being my new primary diet!
Anyways, that’s the end of my little rant for now, and I would love to hear back from any of my fellow bird keepers who have tried pellet diets for their finches and small hook bills as well!
