Charcoal

[finchboy]

debbie276
Only finely ground sun-dried chicken egg shell, but I will soon be adding other ground stuff.

[Jason in TX]

I would like to say I'm a high speed bird keeper that custom blends everything, but I'm not. My finches LOVE Kaytee mineral stuff. It has a crap load of charcoal that gets eaten. It's actually what I have to put in egg food to keep them coming back. I think it smells good. Maybe they do too? I still give cuttle, eggshells, etc.

http://www.kaytee.com/products/fortidie ... -birds.php

[finchboy]

I would like to say I'm a high speed bird keeper that custom blends everything, but I'm not. My finches LOVE Kaytee mineral stuff. It has a crap load of charcoal that gets eaten. It's actually what I have to put in egg food to keep them coming back. I think it smells good. Maybe they do too? I still give cuttle, eggshells, etc.

http://www.kaytee.com/products/fortidie ... -birds.php

Thanks for the link and your wisdom. You are simply marvellous!

[MariusStegmann]

debbie276 I don't have a mineral mix. I give eggshell and cuttlefish bone. The birds eats sand and whatever ? on the bottom of the aviary. finchboy True aviary birds are also caged birds, with the difference that they get plenty of natural sunlight and has access to soil in the most cases.

[finchboy]

...finchboy True aviary birds are also caged birds, with the difference that they get plenty of natural sunlight and has access to soil in the most cases.

That's true, especially with a well-designed aviary.

[monotwine]

MariusStegmann sorry been off line a bit.

Yes I have used charcoal for years. Only a little added though. They use it and it helps absorb toxins in their system. I remove it if medicating.

My mineral mix has a bird mineral, egg shells some kelp powder and charcoal. Always available and I have to refill every other week.
They pick what they want from the mix but usually the mineral and egg is what gets taken the most,

[MariusStegmann]

monotwine Do you make your own mineral mix?

[MariusStegmann]

The birdkeeping never cease to amaze me. Just when you think that you cater to your birds every possible need, you find out there is still something that you can do for them.

[yourcharmedlife]

My birds love my mineral mix, which consists of oyster shell grit, Morning Bird's trace mineral powder, eggshells, Hagen's clay-cal, a bit of charcoal. They visit that cup multiple times a day usually.

WOW I just built up my Amazon card with these things, I offered none of these to my finches >> New Owner. Thank you for naming them all off!

[monotwine]

MariusStegmann
Hi Marius, sorry been on leave and not online at all.
Yes I make my own mineral mix.
Store bought mineral powder, honeyvale herbal vitality mix (new addition and they loving it consisiting of brewers yeast, kelp and garlic), sterilized and crushed egg shells and a very little charcoal. Sometimes there is some grit depending on what is available at stores. They often only sell grit as sand which the finches don't really touch. I prefer the one that has granules of mineral and shells, but small enough for finches to mouth.
I also offer cuttlefish ad lib.

[slwatson]

I use the Cando Mineral Mix listed in this forum as a sticky, and my birds all seem to like it. I offered some to my new love birds, (wasn't sure if they needed it or not) but they were eating away at the mix a couple of days ago.

[tt101]

I use the Cando Mineral Mix listed in this forum as a sticky, and my birds all seem to like it. I offered some to my new love birds, (wasn't sure if they needed it or not) but they were eating away at the mix a couple of days ago.

Speaking of cando mix. What happened with candice? I don't see her posts on here anymore, she was a very active member a few years back.

[Sojourner]

Marius, I have never fed charcoal. I also stopped feeding a mineral grit mix over a year ago. None of my birds were interested in it. Being in planted aviary's, I think they find enough grit, sand etc in the soil.

Yes, and I seriously doubt if anyone has seen their finches eating the grit from their mineral/ grit tray.

I have. Turns out that finch mix I bought included grit - mostly sand, it looked like. And that collected down in the bottom of the bag. When I found it, I dumped it in a treat cup, just to see what happened.

They ate about half of it in short order. I immediately removed it as that sort of grit really isn't good for them. Our finches (my mother raised them decades ago) always got "grit" - much coarser than the sand I found in the bird seed - and as far as I could tell, it didn't kill any of them that we noticed, but we know better now.

Even if it didn't kill them, it really doesn't do anything for them that isn't better handled by offering something else. Crushed oyster shell, for example, fills whatever minor needs they may have for "grit" as well as providing calcium.

Now normally I would assume that since they ate it, there must be a need for it somehow. However they totally ignored it when I dumped it on the cage floor, and they do scavenge around down there. I think they were just being curious cheeky monkeys when it was in the treat cup.

They regularly munch down on the ABBA mineral mix - the blue stuff. BTW, the main ingredient in that is actually crushed oyster shell, which sort of makes that 50 lb bag of oyster shell I bought superfluous for my indoor birds. (I still provide that for outdoor wild birds though).

They love the cuttlebone too. They do occasionally peck at the mineral block. Not sure why they don't like it that well. Our finches of 50 years ago loved their mineral blocks as much as they loved their cuttlebone. Maybe mineral blocks are different than they were half a century ago, or maybe my birds are just picky, LOL!

Whatever needs they may have for something grit-ish are being adequately met by things that aren't actually "grit" per se, but they WILL eat some grit-like things like that sand on occasion.

[Sojourner]

So I tried to add this to the post above, but by the time I got this all typed in, it decided I wasn't allowed to actually make the edit after all, LOL! So I'm putting it in a "follow-on" post instead. Here goes:

I agonized over the proportions to use for the mineral mix that's been stickied. Finally I gave up and just started offering stuff individually in small treat cups. I found out that of the ingredients suggested for that mix, my birds will only eat a few.

1. YES! ABBA mineral mix - They love it
2. YES! Cuttlebone - whole - not ground up as suggested for the mix
3. NO! Crushed egg shell - they have eaten it a little bit, but only if there's no cuttlebone in the cage. They were without cuttlebone for about a month because I had one of those fancy-shmancy "cuttle bone holders", which they did a Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on. Because they made it clear that that cuttle bone holder was there ... for them to POOP on! It got SUPER nasty super fast. I tossed it, cuttlebone and all, and went back to "inadequate" wire to tie it to the side of the cage.
4. NO! Oyster shell - suggested to crush before offering which is a good idea - but the ABBA mix is already mostly oyster shell, plus they have both the cuttle bone and a mineral block if they're feeling peckish for more calcium - so this is not necessary when they're already including the ABBA mix.
5. NO! Charcoal - Don't put this in a mineral mix. The fact is that it will filter out not only "toxins" but also at least some vitamins and many medications. I am offering this less and less as time passes because for one thing, they don't eat that much of it, and for another, it doesn't differentiate between good stuff like vitamins and bad stuff like toxins. Keep it on hand for toxic emergencies, but don't put it in your mix, that just makes extra work for you when you want to give vitamins or medications. Offer it infrequently, separately, and only when called for for some specific reason. I know that probably isn't going to sit well with some people, but there have been cases of birds gorging on the charcoal and getting stuffed crops and dying.
6. NO! Salt. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't find any evidence that this is good for them. Plus, there was the whole issue of proportion that was never resolved, and this is something I definitely won't offer free-feed. Could be wrong about this - all creatures need some dietary salt or their brains stop working. And maybe putting it in a mineral mix is the best delivery method - but without having an idea of the correct proportion, I've just skipped it. Not everybody uses salt in their mix anyway.

Keeping in mind that different birds will have different preferences, so its a good idea to offer all the suggested ingredients (except maybe salt) individually and see what they will and won't eat. It may be different from what my birds eat, and what they turn their beaks up at.

Also, if you have LOTS of birds - I only have the two - it may make more sense to take a shotgun approach to your mineral mix. The more birds, the more likely they are to disagree with each other about what's good. In which case it makes way more sense to mix it ALL up anyway. Except for the oyster shell - if you're already using the ABBA mineral mix.

You could use crushed oyster shell plus a trace mineral mix instead of the ABBA mineral mix, but if you're using the ABBA mix, there's no reason to offer yet more crushed oyster shell. I am not suggesting that you stint on the sources of calcium, but in my case, given they happily eat the ABBA mix and the cuttlebone and occasionally even the mineral block, they've got plenty already.

I think offering them only ONE source of calcium could be risky.

I had a bird who died of egg binding, and it happened soon after I had removed the filthy cuttlebone. She may have been ignoring the crushed egg shell I was offering instead, and I hadn't started using the ABBA mix yet. Or, it may have been sort of a "perfect storm" situation - she LOVED spinach and I fed it to her a couple of times a week. However, it turns out "too much" spinach can cause calcium loss. Given the way she used to gorge on spinach, twice a week was perhaps too often, or perhaps I should have offered only a couple leaves at a time instead of a handful. Or maybe it was purely coincidental - but I do feel safer offering more than one calcium source.