Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!bu-cs!encore!cloud9!mm
From: mm@cloud9.Stratus.COM (Mike Mahler)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Bird diets
Message-ID: <6514@cloud9.Stratus.COM>
Date: 20 Jul 89 19:38:02 GMT
References: <1292@intercon.UUCP>
Organization: Stratus Computer, Inc., Marlboro, MA
Lines: 26

In article <1292@intercon.UUCP>, ooblick@intercon.uucp (Mikki Barry) writes:
> and fresh fruits and vegetables.  My yellow nape was on a seed diet
> until my vet pointed out that this is not good.  

    Seed diets are "not good"?  I'd like to see the evidence to support
    this.

> Since switching him to
> pellets, his feather color, quality, and his overall disposition has
> improved considerably.  It took a year on the new diet to notice major 
> differences, but at least for my birds, the pellets seem to have made them 
> healtheir.


    Give me a year with some Nekton, FRESH fruits and vegetables and seed
    and I'm sure my birds would look just as healthy AND their stool would
    be NORMAL for a bird.  Brown stools are not normal for everyday
    excretions and brown runny stools are what you get with pellets.
    Birds may get a more concentrated dose of vitamins and minerals, but
    is their digestive tract suffering?  Will birds on these pellets have
    a higher incidence of digestive tract cancers?  Diahrea?  

    WHO KNOWS?  NO ONE?  Pellets haven't been around long enough to determine.
    Sure, I use them, but they ARE NOT my brids sole source of bulk.

    Maybe this is religious, but I don't feed my animals on faith.