I'm new and a PIA...another question? ??

[MariusStegmann]

lnlovesorange Sorry, I can help you with an online link. I am in darkest Africa and here we have to do things for ourselves. The soaked seed should work for you. At the soaked stage it already had a higher nutritional value. Some of the seeds just looked very large on the online link. But your birds would select what they want and ignore the rest.

[steve]

I give my birds Avi-Plus eggfood that I mix with scramble eggs to make it palatable for the birds.

@MariusStegmann, do you add milk and oil to the scrambled egg? How much egg and Avi plus do you mix?

Regards
Steve

[MiaCarter]

lnlovesorange -- I've tried all sorts of berries, including blueberries, raspberries and blackberries.

You can grow all 3 of those in MA. I had them all in my yard. It took about two and a half years for them to get to a good size and start producing lots of fruit. For the first year or two, the berries were all quite small, so I tossed all berries back onto the ground so they'd make more plants.
There are lots of wild blueberries and blackberries in Breakheart Reservation near the entrance in Wakefield in the Vocational School parking lot. I stole tons of small plants and berries from there, along with lots of fresh grasses and other goodies. So go up there once it warms up in May or early June and see what you find. (Just go Route 1 to the exit with Target and Kelly's Roast Beef in Saugus. It's a straight shot to Farm Street in Wakefield; the voke school and Breakheart Reservation entrance is on the hill behind Wakefield High School, so super easy to find.)

Give them time. I usually offer for a solid 2 weeks before I give up.
Many birds don't try things eagerly, so sometimes, it just takes time.

Also, make sure you're serving on a dish or food cup that they recognize as a food source.
I've found that if I put in an unfamiliar dish or cup, they're more hesitant to try it.
It also helps to put the new foods in with favorites. I often sprinkle millet seeds amidst new fruits and veggies to attract their attention (and they get some of the taste when the juices get on the seeds.


I don't add milk to scrambled eggs. Birds are lactose intolerant, so you're just diluting the nutrient-dense egg with something they can't digest.

I make my scrambled eggs in the microwave.
Put them in a bowl and microwave until cooked. 1 egg takes around a minute. 2 eggs, around 1:45. A half dozen takes around 4 min.
For the bigger batches, cook in 90 sec increments, then pull it out to mix up the eggs before you re-nuke. It will cook around the edges first, leaving uncooked egg in the centre and bottom. If you leave it as-is, the edges get overcooked by the time the middle cooks up. So just mixing it up a couple times ensures even cooking.

Then I mash up the eggs with the back of a fork. Easiest if you do it while they're still warm and soft.
I mix in handfeeding formula to make it drier. You can also use baby rice cereal or oats. Or just serve plain eggs as-is. I do that sometimes too.

[MariusStegmann]

steve Steve, I am lazy, I take an egg, put the contents in a cup. I then double the mixture by adding milk to it. I mix it and put about 2 cm worth of the mixture in a cup, that I microware for 30 seconds. I mix the cooked egg with an equal amount of eggfood with a fork. The milk prevents the egg from going rubbery and adds a bit of moisture to the eggfood mixture. The rest of the egg mixture I put in the refigerator.

[lnlovesorange]

MiaCarterin i know right where you're talking about. I just never realized there was an entrance to Breakheart there! Being from Lynn i always go the Saugus enhance. Thanks for the tip!

[dutch]

lnlovesorange

Feed them both seed and pellet

Crush the pellets into a fine powder and place in seperate dish

My birds wouldn't touch it for months..now they love it

[delray]

dutch good idea.

[dutch]

delray

I think they were too lazy to chew it

[Ginene]

dutch...I think my birds didn't eat the pellets because they are so boring...does that sound dumb? Lol! They love everything else, but when it came to pellets, they didn't even try them. I know some people pulverize them and add the powder to egg food and chopped veggies too. I should try that

[dutch]

Ginene

I tried adding the pellets to egg food

They only started eating it when it was in a dish on it's own and in powder form

[Ginene]

dutch

Good to know. Thanks for the info! Thankfully my parrotlet loves her pellets

[flywhoaman]

Just like the dogfood contrast from 1960- 2015, there has been a lot of improvement in bird food from the earlier days of raising domestic birds. Seeds are clearly warranted, but I feel it does not hurt to provide additional feed, especially those that have "natural" components as a wide variety of minerals and nutrients are also added. I feel it is wise to allow free feeding of various pelleted foods in addition to providing good clean seed, sprouted chits, and a mix of greens and vegetables. In my opinion, it isn't an either or, it is a mix of different offerings.

I find, for example, that my birds will sometimes ignore particular pellets and then, out of the blue, eat the entire offering in a day. All my birds are given a "bird feeder" of mixed seed and the diversity of feed suggested above.

One factor that we often don't consider in this mix is water. I was having horrible problems with my freshwater aquarium and tested the water to find that it is above 8.4pH. Knowing this, I now have to go back and try and determine how this affects the intake of nutrients and minerals for my birds. Nothing is simple.

[lnlovesorange]

dutch wow great idea, so simple. .. never thought of it! Thank you for the great idea s everyone has been so helpful. So glad i found this page!

[MiaCarter]

lnlovesorange - You bet!
I've actually never used any of the other Breakheart entrances, so I'm not sure if there are any good plants near there. But there were tons around the Wakefield entrance, starting a couple hundred yards in. Just watch out for nekkid people! (I don't know why, but I'd see nekkid people nearly every time I visited! LOL Usually skinny-dippers. But sometimes just wandering around randomly nude. It's just plain bizarre!)

@Dutch - Can you tell me how you manage to crush them up?
I tried that myself, but I couldn't get them crushed up enough. So I ended up with chunks of pellet that got ignored. I couldn't figure out how to get them broken up into a powder.
Then again, I've got a really crappy mini food processor. So maybe I just need a bigger one? Or a pillow case and a hammer? I dunno. What's the trick?

[franny]

I've heard that some people use a small coffee grinder. Or how about a mortar and pestle?