Bread, anyone ?

[Malti]

i give them dried bread crumbs once in a while. not fresh as if they're gluttons might expand in their crop and kill them if they over eat

[Spreckles]

Elana
ALL creatures like treats. If it's just a treat what harm can it do? Maybe bread is birdie chocolate ;)

[lovezebs]

Spreckles


Chocolate. .. yummmy.
I love chocolate

[Spreckles]

AND sourdough bread my favorite...warm with lots of butter

[cindy]

from an article on diet... "Another item of concern in birds in sodium chloride, or salt. Salt, however is required by birds as it is by all living animals. While minerals, such as sodium and chloride only constitute a small fraction of the body weight, they are critical for a variety of functions within the body including acid-base balance, maintaining body fluid balance and many general cellular functions. A deficiency of sodium can cause polyuria (excessive fluid excretion), weight loss, fatigue, and slow growth. Many otherwise healthy foods that people routinely eat are high in salt. Further, many crackers, snack items, chips, fast foods, and canned vegetables (unrinsed) if eaten in sufficient quantities may actually be toxic to birds.

Signs of a mild salt toxicity (5-10 times requirement) will result in polydipsia, or increased water consumption and subsequent polyuria, or increased fluid (urine) in the droppings. Because excess salt is excreted via the kidneys, a bird with mild to moderate kidney dysfunction may consume toxic doses of salt readily. Deprivation of water alone may lead to salt toxicity because the kidneys are not proficiently perfused or bathed by fluids to remove the sodium and chloride.

Even birds with good kidney function may develop signs of a toxicity if salt is consumed in large quantities. Besides polydipsia and polyuria, a toxic insult of salt may lead to kidney failure (with no urine produced), a subsequent build-up of body fluids (ascites), neurological signs2 and heart failure leading to death."

mentioned earlier... the sodium count in the bread is: Sodium 160mg 7%... according to the finch info center finches daily intake of sodium is .15%

[lovezebs]

cindy

Thanks Cindy, definitely food for thought.

[hanabi]

lovezebs

cindy

Interesting discussion here. I also often wondered about feeding bread as a treat from time to time.

mentioned earlier... the sodium count in the bread is: Sodium 160mg 7%... according to the finch info center finches daily intake of sodium is .15%

If I am not mistaken the 7% figure is meaningless because it is the percentage of the sodium RDI for humans (i.e., one slice of bread contains 7% of your recommended daily intake of sodium, so eat 14 slices and you're done for the day) and this can't be compared directly to the 0.15% RDI for finches.

The 0.15% figure is the percentage of the total intake of finch food in one day that should be sodium. So if a finch eats say 20 grams of food in one day, then that food should ideally contain 20 x 0.0015 = 30mg of sodium.

So now we need to estimate how much sodium a finch will consume in one day eating this bread. The 160mg figure is relevant and is, according to the website, per 43 grams of bread (one slice). So what percentage of a single 43 gram slice of bread do you think a finch would eat? I have no idea, but if we assume 1% then their daily intake of sodium in milligrams (from eating the bread alone, i.e., excluding other sources of sodium) will be 0.01 x 160mg = 1.6 milligrams of sodium per day from this bread.

The above figures (eating 20g of food per day, eating 1% of a slice of bread per day) are quite rubbery, and hopefully more experienced forum members can help refine those figures, but none-the-less it is pretty clear that a finch would have to eat a hell of a lot of this bread to go over the sodium RDI (around 30/1.6 = 18% of a single slice actually). I'd say as a treat once or twice a week their sodium intake would not be a problem at all.

Hopefully there are no errors in the calcs above but by all means let me know if there are.

Elana, did you dry the bread before feeding, or feed it fresh/moist?

Cheers,

[debbie276]

http://www.finchinfo.com/diet/nutrition ... ements.php

Most of the nutritional studies that exist have been done on poultry. Unfortunately so many differences exist between poultry and other species of birds, that using poultry data as a basis for developing a finch diet may be dangerous, especially in light of the fact that poultry only consume up to 6% of their body weight daily, and finches consume up to 30%.

The following table is based on approximations for maintenance of adult, non-breeding, granivorous, passerine birds; actual requirements may vary due to species and individual differences.

[hanabi]

Thanks debbie276.

Ok there is our first refinement. Let's redo the numbers. A finch like a Gouldian weighs about 17g, consumption @ 30% of body weight = about 5g of food per day.

5g x 0.0015 = 7.5mg of sodium (recommended RDI).

160mg of sodium in one slice of that bread, so a Gouldian should eat no more than 7.5 x 100 / 160 = 5% of a single slice of this particular bread per day (other brands may be much higher or lower in sodium of course). And that assumes no other sources of sodium. It still sounds safe if done as a periodic treat, but perhaps not something you would want to do daily.

How much of a single slice of bread do you think one of your finches would eat Elana?

Cheers.

[lovezebs]

hanabi & debbie276

Definitely opened up the proverbial 'can of worms' here, didn't I? LOL !

I offered half of a fresh slice, (give or take) to a mixed group of Canaries, Gouldians, and Parrott Finches. They enjoyed it tremendously . They seemed to mostly pick at the bits of seeds in the bread.

Honestly, I don't see this as a concern. It's not as if I offered each individual bird a whole slice of bread as their only food source for the day.

Just a quick question, if birds eat a seed diet, with vegetables and fruits, eggs, crushed meal worms, cuttle, grit, bird clay, bird charcoal, etc. where do they get their salt from? How much natural occuring salts are present in such a diet?

I've read somewhere, that some people add some iodized salt to their bird grit, so how does that compute into how much salt each individual bird may consume?

[Spreckles]

Cindy hanabi Debbie276

Ross, dazzling math you need to definitely be consulted for med questions relating to doses / weight. Whew that was good.

This is can of worms or bread crumbs???? Seriously is some of this discussion similar to those who feel dogs should never eat people food???? or is is really a big deal? Elana did say it was a treat not a meal. The question about where the sodium does come from in a healthy diet is a good one. Eggs ans some greens have some sodium in them.
I would be more concerned about gluten in general than sodium because of the allergens it produces. Then we could add more worms and bring up the spraying of wheat crops by Monsanto which is causing a lot of people to develop all kinds of GI issues so what would sprayed wheat do to little birds? MORE WORMS!!!!

[debbie276]

Personally I don't feed bread because I believe there is very little nutritional value, kind of like feeding iceberg lettuce. I try not to dilute their food with "filler" foods. Same reason I keep the hard boiled egg just egg except for handfeeding formula to dry it out a bit. The formula is full of vitamins, minerals and all that good stuff, after all it is a complete food.
Just what I do, not saying anyone has to do things my way

[Bfitzthum]

I know my local pet store sells (sold?) A mix for birdy bread. I will get in there the next couple of days and see what the package says if it is still available.