Steph,
Keep in mind that you are keeping Parrot Finches and that their dietary needs will differ in many regards from the program Tiffany is using for her gouldians. With that said, we do not prescribe to the austerity style feeding program because all of the research that supports that type of feeding cycle has been done on birds in the wild and the needs of caged birds are somewhat different due to the nature of captivity. Also something to keep in mind is that, what works for one person or one bird may not work for everyone or all birds, and I completely understand that. (Sally and Donna differ a bit with there programs from ours, and have great success with the diet they use.) Lord knows we have tried many things over the years with our beta testing program. Some things work great while others not so much. When we find something that works we add it to or program or replace something that it does a better job at. We have, however, been using our program for several years with much success, and our customer base is a testament to that. I have to give kudos to Morning Bird and Twin Beaks Aviary for their great lines of avian products for much of our success. The real key is to offer variety in the diet since no one food source is complete.
We do not colony breed any longer. While we keep mixed flights there is only one pair of a species in a flight. Our program is fairly simple since we keep more birds than we can keep an accurate daily count on.
Here is our program. . .
We use our own seed blend, Miracle Herb Seed, which is a blend of our Premium Finch Seed, Miracle Meal, and Herb Salad mixed at a proprietary ratio. Fresh egg food here's the recipe we use and share
http://www.fairestfinches.com/articles/ ... /90955.htm
(I started keeping chickens this past year to insure that the eggs are the best organic eggs I can get without paying an arm and a leg for them at the market. My egg bill used to be around $50.00 a month, and is now reduced to around $15.00 for feeding my flock of Australorps.)
We also offer Convenience Mix which is powdered cuttlebone, fine ground charcoal, powdered kelp, and trace minerals powder mixed at a proprietary ratio. We also offer spray millet once a week as a treat for non breeding birds and all of the time for breeding pairs with juvies since the spray millet works great for teaching the young how to husk seed and feed themselves as well as being an easily digestible source of nutrition. We also offer Palm Oil Meal (another proprietary product) to give the birds essential fatty acids in a form that does not go rancid, which helps to prevent egg binding and improve feather condition. We use canned meal worms instead of live because the live ones gross Michele out, and it reduces the amount of care needed for the worms. We use Liquid Iodine and Calcium Plus in the water a couple of times a week. We do not offer a lot of dark green leafy veggies because consuming too much of them can cause health problems for the birds. We will, on occasion, offer dark green leafy veggies as a treat.
We do not purchase sprouting seed since the seed in our Premium Finch Blend is untreated, organic seed and it sprouts very quickly. So we just use that when we choose to sprout seed as a treat for our birds.
Hope that helps some and does not create any confusion for you in your quest for a diet program you can use.
Sean
