Grams and Harrison's Coarse

[tkessel]

I have given up on Zupreem pellets for both my cockatiel and CAG. (Neither bird will take them, I just throw the uneaten pellets away every day.) I got some Harrison's fine for Ben the cockateil and coarse for Wuzzie the CAG. Ben took to the Harrison's pellets right away.  I tried one myself, and it wasn't that bad! 

Wuzzie is a bit more picky, so it will be a while before I can convert her.  But she already gets a good mixture of a variety of healthy foods from our table,  so she has been on less of a seedy diet.

I do have a comment: There seems to be a lot of opinion that pellets=good; seeds=bad.  However, when one reads the ingredient label on Harrison's, it seems to be pellets=seeds! 

Now to an actual question.  The suggested "daily amount to feed" for the coarse  for Wuzzie is 1 1/2tbs (15-30g).  I think the table spoon measurement is a bit hard to envision, as the pellets are so "coarse" there is no way to accurately measure a tablespoon.  I don't have a scale, so I can't weigh the pellets.

I thought about dividing the package up into 22 piles (which would be about 21 g per pile from the 454 g package).  But I thought I'[d ask here if anyone can just tell me about how many coarse pellets equals, for example, 10 g.  I can then do the rest of the calculating on my own!


Ben

[vantage]

1 cube is equal to 1 gram

[jules]

confusing eh? according to my vet,it only takes 28 sunflowers to fill a parrots tum,so therefore 28 pellets  i think thats what he said. i find this rather alot seeing as jasper wont eat many and as you said eventually they're thrown out. wasi may be different,she might end up eating all of hers
 
so what i do do is just put a smaller amount say about ten or so mixed with his variety of nuts and a few seeds. birds do need some seeds every day. its just that cheaper mixes are packed with sunflowers which eating lots of can be fattening for a parrot 

i neve rweigh jaspers foood,but i will tomorrow and let you know. he doesnt have the coarse just the ordinary one (blue label)

[tkessel]

As I suspected there are 15 of the 18 cubes in Wuzzie's food bowl this evening, but I didn't get to check the bottom of and area around her cage for anything she managed to fling away.  However, she had plenty to eat today, about two tbs of mixed seed, a small chicken bone, a bit of yam, two cherries, a shelled peanut and two cheerios and a bit of raw asparagus.

Tomorrow it will be a few fewer cubes, and half the mixed seeds.  I won't give up for a while, but as she is a very healthy acting and appearing parrot, I am not as convinced as the Harrison's forum that Harrison pellets are the only/best thing for her.  I also might try breaking the coarse into small pellets, and seeing if she likes that better.  Although there are some sunflower seeds in the seed mix, it is mostly other seeds.  If she won't take Harrison's I will remain calm, and go back to what I was doing before.   Just don't tell Wasi that!   

Ben is doing really well with the Harrison's fine.

[tkessel]

  I had a surprise this morning: Wuzzie was snacking either late last night or early this morning.  All 15 of the Harrison's pellets that I counted in her food dish last night were gone from her food dish this morning.  I checked the bottom of her cage as I cleaned it this morning, and there were only 3 there, so of the 18 pellets I put in the food bowl yesterday morning, 15 were eaten by Wuzzie.

So I am going to increase to about 30 pellets today, and count again tomorrow.  I don't want to be throwing away any more than about 5 pellets a day, so eventually I'll find the right ratio between the pellets and the rest of her diet. 

[autumnmoon]

LOL you are lucky! Banter breaks his all up. If I were doing your system, I would be adding fractions

[jules]

there you go  that was a good gues wasnt it,wasi eats nearly all of her pellets hooraaayyy 

forgot to weigh jaspers though 

[Janie]

I was reading up on seeds and African Greys, and they really aren't bad for them... it's what they eat in the wild...  but...  in the wild they are out and about all day foraging for their meals...  so all the fatty goodness of the seeds is used up...  caged birds do not get the exercise that their wild cousins do and so can get fat on a totally seed diet.

Some seeds, like sunflower are higher in fat content, but do seem to be added to lots of cheaper seed products as the main seed.  I guess they are cheap and easy to bulk up a seed mix. 

hugs Janie xxx

[feika]

Luckily I live in a country where you can find a lot of good places to buy bird seed mix, here also, the shop keepers have 2 or 3 of their own seed mixes pertaining to smaller, medium and bigger birds. What I do is that I ask the man to make a seed mix for me minus the sunflower seeds and I buy the sunflower seeds separately to be given as treats only. There are about 20 odd seed types in that mix, I will try and find their English names and if found post it for you. There is millet, canary seed, red rice, brown rice, to name a few.
There's corn on the cob every now and then, soaked grams, and beans as well.

[tkessel]

One of the reasons why in my original post I stated that pellets=seeds.  Although the pellets are balanced with a correct proportion of seeds, so that is a great advantage.

I do not know if it is like a food label for humans, on which the ingredients are listed starting with the most-used ingredients, Harrison's High Potency, which is the recommended pellet for greys, has this listed as its ingredients:

Ground Shelled Sunflower Seeds, Ground Hulless Barley, Ground Soybeans, Ground Shelled Peanuts, Ground Green Peas, Ground Lentils, Ground Yellow Corn, Ground Rice, Ground Toasted Oat Groats, Psyllium, Ground Sun-Dried Alfalfa, Calcium Carbonate, Spirulina, Montmorillonite Clay, Ground Dried Sea Kelp, Vitamin E Supplement, Sea Salt, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Niacin Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Pyridoxine Hydrohchloride, d-Botin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Sodium Selenate.

With a "Guaranteed Analysis": Crude Protein (min) 18%, Crude Fat (min) 15%, Crude Fiber (max) 6.5%, Moisture (max) 10%.

15-30g per day for a grey, with 10% permitted for "supplements" for the ideal (HBD) diet.  Part of the "ideal" to me seems that that is how they measured good results in greys.  (There are studies one can browse at the Harrison's web site.) It also seems "ideal" for HBD that consumers use the maximum of their product. (Although I give them credit for suggestions on how to preserve freshness, and not waste the pellets, and they do have documented results from studies, not just stories from satisfied customers.)