Mike Fidler's soft food

[diinin]

Can anyone tell me exactly what this soft food is? Is it a powder that you mix with water to form some kind of mash and then hope your birds eat the recommended 1/8 tsp? The Birds R Us seed mixes don't have added vitamins, so it seems to me that if you don't give them the soft food, they might have some deficiencies down the road, but getting them to eat the right amount could result in either deficiencies or the hypervitaminosis that they try to avoid with this diet.

My other concern is that it "minimizes or eliminates the need for live food in some species." I happen to enjoy doing live food, and my birds love it, so I don't want that eliminated. I could just use the soft food to gutload the worms if I could be sure they got enough that way, but I seriously doubt it. Well, the blue girl would get enough, but nobody else would...

This diet seems so complicated, but I'm trying to get away from Abba, which has sunflower seeds and ground corn (and I don't think much at all of the fancy ingredients farther down on the list, like meats, fruits and veggies). I wrote the folks at BirdsRUs, but they didn't respond.

[nixity]

It is meant to be mixed with the sprouted seed at a ratio of 20%, and the sprouted seed mixes are meant to be blended at a ratio of 2:1 white:black.

There is no real way to guarantee a specific bird is consuming 1/8 tsp per day, but if you are offering it mixed in the sprouts and lets say, for example, you are feeding it to a breeding pair, if the dish is empty at the end of the day (as mine generally are), you can rest assured that each bird is very likely consuming the appropriate amount and the way in which it is mixed eliminates the risk that any one bird would "over eat" the soft food and have hypervitaminosis.

Where you risk hypervitaminosis is if in addition to the sprouted seed and soft food mixture, you offer additional commercial soft foods and/or multivitamins which generally also contain a full days worth of vitamins and minerals and risk the bird consuming two to three times as much as they should in a single day.

You can offer the soft food on its own (i.e., not mixed in with the sprouts), but I find it is more successful feeding it with the sprouts.

If you prefer to continue offering live food then my suggestion would be to NOT use the soft food, and then you are left with having to use some sort of added vitamin/mineral supplement to the diet to make it complete.

[diinin]

So is it sort of a powder that is mixed with water?

I plan to use Fidler's white sprouted seed, and probably the regular seed blend, mixed with Dr. Harvey's (which is higher in fat, so I think could take the place of the Fidler herb seed mix and the black sprouted mix). I don't think any of those foods are fortified though. I'm thinking about just using the soft food as a worm gutload, but then I'll probably have to do some supplementing on the side.

The problem is, if you don't stick with their whole plan, you're left with a little bit of guesswork on whether the birdies are getting everything they need (or too much of it). I think if I had to stick with one route only, I'd do Harvey's. That mix looks awesome, and you can actually see the veggies in it, unlike the Abba food where I think the veggies/fruits/etc are such a small part of the mix that they are almost not there. You surely can't find them.

[nixity]

So is it sort of a powder that is mixed with water?

No - it is powder-like (dry and crumbly but the pieces are not as large as say, Miracle Meal soft food) and meant to be mixed with sprouted seed, after the seed has chitted. (so, after the seed is drained and let to sit for ~24 hours)

I plan to use Fidler's white sprouted seed, and probably the regular seed blend, mixed with Dr. Harvey's (which is higher in fat, so I think could take the place of the Fidler herb seed mix and the black sprouted mix). I don't think any of those foods are fortified though. I'm thinking about just using the soft food as a worm gutload, but then I'll probably have to do some supplementing on the side.

I can't speak on using the system piece meal - since it was designed to be a complete nutritional source as it is indicated, splicing it up might create questions on deficiencies within the diet that I can't really answer. Also - I noticed your list of kept species and that they are all African.
Not that this diet won't work for them - but it was really formulated for Australian Grassfinches/Australian Grasskeets.

The problem is, if you don't stick with their whole plan, you're left with a little bit of guesswork on whether the birdies are getting everything they need (or too much of it).

Exactly

[diinin]

Also - I noticed your list of kept species and that they are all African.
Not that this diet won't work for them - but it was really formulated for Australian Grassfinches/Australian Grasskeets.

That was my main question for them, because I thought it was really made for Gouldians. Ahhh, they just now answered. It didn't help that I got Fidler and Harvey mixed up in my first email to them...lol.

I emailed Harvey's to ask if their diet needed supplementation, and they replied immediately, requesting that I call, because Dr. Harvey wanted to speak with me himself, so I'll talk to him today hopefully.

[nixity]

Well - to be fair, Dr. Harvey's if I'm looking at the right site is located in the US, in NJ to be exact. So from where you are, maybe only 1 hour time difference.

BirdsRUs is located in AUS and they are about 13-15 hours AHEAD of us depending upon where in AUS the person who generally responds to emails is located.

[diinin]

Well - to be fair, Dr. Harvey's if I'm looking at the right site is located in the US, in NJ to be exact. So from where you are, maybe only 1 hour time difference.

Well, I wrote both these places last week and didn't hear back from BirdsRUs until today, but I mistakenly entitled my first email "Dr. Harvey's for nonbreeders." So I'm sure that was a little confusing. I re-sent it with the correct title, and they did write back a very helpful email, so now I'm just trying to find out if I can continue mealworms or if that's a bad idea. THEN, I'll have to decide between the two brands, or find some way to combine both.

[diinin]

Okay, here's what Bill from the BirdsRUs line said:

"The Fidler diet is not too rich for nonbreeding birds. In fact, the soft food is given twice a week during the maintenance period when breeding birds are resting. And for nonbreeding birds, the soft food should be fed daily during the molt.

The soft food is necessary for them to get all their vitamins, and is all they need in addition to fresh water, dry seed and a calcium grit such as oyster shell.

The soft food is a small crumble that can be fed dry or mixed with sprouted seeds as Mike recommends. You don't add water to it. It is not a composite batter that is mixed up, but rather many different bits and pieces of the ingredients which allows your birds to forage and balance their own diet. It would be ideal for a mixed collection such as yours. It puts all essential nutritional elements in front of your birds in a form that allows them to customize their diet to their particular needs.

In your instance I would offer Birds R Us Premium Finch Blend for the dry seed (and additionally offer Premium Herb Seed during the molt). ABBA Mineral Grit or Hatched! are excellent calcium grits. And then Mike's Soft Food mixed with the White and Black Sprouting Mixes per directions for a plug and play diet for your birds. It really works, as your birds will take care of the rest from there."

Guess this means I won't be able to mix it with Harvey's, so I have to make a decision to do one or the other. He did say I would still offer live food, but as they take more of the soft food, they may eat fewer worms.

[nixity]

Makes sense - he may have just been recommending a seed blend from the BRU line - you could always send him the information for the Dr. Harvey's blend and see if it would work in conjunction.

When I looked at the ingredients, it seemed as if the seeds contained in the mix were pretty high protein/fat, though, and that would be my main concern.

[diinin]

When I looked at the ingredients, it seemed as if the seeds contained in the mix were pretty high protein/fat, though, and that would be my main concern.

Yeah, the Harvey mix is minimum 12% fat, so it is pretty high. That concerned me too, and was my initial motivation for mixing the two diets. The regular BRU seed mix has 3.25% fat. I'm sure Bill from BRU wouldn't recommend mixing them, because the first ingredient in Harvey's is bee pollen, and he said to avoid feeding pollen alongside their diet.

For the moment, I'm feeding Harvey's as sort of a treat to see if they actually eat all those neat things. Their hoppers are still filled with Abba.

I just ordered the sprouted seed mixes from Fidler. I'm leaning toward that diet, though I'm nervous about getting their soft food into my goldbreasts. Without the soft food, their diet could be very deficient, and I don't even think the GB's would get enough via gutloaded mealworms (esp. not with the blue girl around).

[nixity]

the first ingredient in Harvey's is bee pollen, and he said to avoid feeding pollen alongside their diet.

Oh right - I forgot about that, I knew there was something else about it that struck me.. strange that it would be the first ingredient, too - first ingredient usually is meant to indicate that ingredient as the highest percentage in the mix and I don't quite understand why anyone would want the bulk of a seed eating finch's diet to be pollen.

[diinin]

I wondered about that too. Usually millet is the first ingredient. I'm not into the whole holistic thing, but I know a girl at work who thinks that bee pollen is just IT. She tried to tell me that you could live on bee pollen and nothing else. Of course, she was getting her info from a website that sells the stuff. I've looked for real scientific studies on the stuff, and it hasn't been quite so rosy. The contamination risk is especially worrisome, as noted by this article I just ran across:

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRel ... H/bee.html

[nixity]

I couldn't help but notice this bullet and laugh:

*In 1992, a federal court ordered destruction of quantities of Bee Alive, a royal jelly and herb combination in honey seized from Bee-Alive Inc., of Valley Cottage, N.Y.

My fiance was born and raised in Valley Cottage!!

I will admit that I tried bee pollen with my birds because I carry the MB Product line which manufacturers bee pollen for birds.
I didn't notice any improvement or decline in their performance or health - so it didn't appear to help nor hurt but very few birds consumed it when offered free choice.

I can still see the benefit of carrying it because I attend marts and shows that are not finch exclusive and pollen is a major dietary component for Nectar eating softbills and can also be used to supplement Lory and Lorikeet diets, which do regularly consume pollen in their diet

[diinin]

And I wouldn't necessarily mind having it somewhere deep down there on the ingredient list, but not as the #1 component.

So Tiffany, do you use the BRU line for your Gouldians? If so, I was wondering if you give them anything else, like veggies or fruit or other things for variety.

[nixity]

Yes I use it..

For a long time I offered my birds a veggie mash along with their sprouts daily or nearly daily, as well as whole dark leafy greens (mainly Kale).
When I moved to MD - I lost the luxury of having not one, but two Whole Foods within 5 mins of my house.
The closest one to me now is in Annapolis which is roughly 30-45 mins away depending on traffic.

I started to buy the bagged large chopped Kale and diced it in a food processor finely.. I did this from November up until about a month or a month and a half ago when I decided that because my birds are in the basement, and despite running a dehumidifier almost nonstop, there is just too much moisture in the air for the greens because they were smelling sour by the end of the day.

I wasn't/am not having the same issue with the sprouts because they don't retain moisture like the vegs did. They are always dry (what's left) by the time I get home.
Occasionally I will cave and give my birds chopped broccoli which they relish but I had what I am certain was an E.coli outbreak in a few pairs that got the greens so I'm really gun shy about using them anymore until I have a place where the birds can be in their own building or at least an area with less humidity in the air