Red palm oil: how much?

[Girltron]

I don't seem to turn up much info on dosage for this stuff. Francis will eat it if it's tossed into something he really thinks is fun, like brown rice pasta. I just don't want to overdo it. How much is enough?

[judygram]

Like a few drops or no more than 1/4 teaspoon a day, you can drizzle it over most anything or mix it in with mushy type foods, they way you are giving it to him is great.

[JillyBeanz]

Just watch where you give it to Francis - like not on a cream rug or carpet!! My fatal mistake was mixing it into some veggies, which were in turn tossed across the room!!!!

[Girltron]

Ha ha, yes, the first time I just dipped an almond into it and handed it to him. He happily shook all the goo off, then ate the almond and left me with orange splatters on my new shirt.

[crossfit]

Hawkins likes to eat it right out of a spoon. I put a teaspoon out, he eats about a quarter of it and the dogs get to lick the spoon afterwords for a special treat. But they don't all love it. And they change their minds often. Some days he doesn't want anything to do with it and I figure it is not a big deal on those days since he gets it almost daily.

[Xtreme575]

Luckily I have hardwood, so I drizzle it in with the steamed chopped veggies and let the fun begin.

[Girltron]

I thought of that, but Francis tosses an awful lot of what I give him. He likes pasta, so it's a surer bet that he'll eat more of it.

 

Now, he was living on a seeds-only diet in his former residence. The vet yesterday told me he's overweight, based on what he could feel...I don't actually have a good baseline weight for him, and they didn't tell me what he weighed yesterday either, but clearly his old diet wasn't doing him any favors. I'm a little worried about overdoing it with the oil too, but he's a feather picker so I really want to work it into his routine. Here's how I feed him, and maybe y'all could give me a sense if I'm giving too much fat:

 

1/4 cup of Harrisons High Potency kibble per day, of which he eats 1-2 tablespoons on most days. In the dry bowl I also put about 3 tablespoons of seed mix per day, which he does eat almost all of. I got two kinds that both looked good: Higgins Safflower Gold for large hookbills, and Volkmann's Avian Science for hookbills. I just mixed them together. I leave that bowl out all day.

 

The fresh food bowl gets filled twice a day, morning and night. I put about 1/2 cup chopped veggies, 1/4 cup chopped fruit, and 2 tablespoons of well cooked beans. In the morning I add 2 tablespoons of whole grain noodles, semicooked, tossed with 1/4 teaspoon of red palm oil. He eats most of the pasta and does eat some of the fruit and veggies. He adores beans.

 

We're using almonds as rewards and he gets up to possibly 5 a day.

 

That might be a lot of fat, considering the palm oil???

Edited May 30, 2010 by Girltron
clarity

[crossfit]

It seems like a lot of fat to me as well but I am not a parrot nutritionist. My vet did tell me that greys eat concentrated foods in the wild such as the red palm fruit (full of oil). I also have heard on here and other sites that safflower seeds have no nutritional value for the birds. Almonds are high in calcium and Greys can sometimes be low on calcium so I wouldn't take those out but I might cut back on the seed mix a bit more. My vet recommends only harrisons and palm oil but I like to give the fresh fruit and vegies that people here recommend as it makes sense to me from what I have studied. I think she recommends that because so many birds get seed only diets in my area.

[Jayd]

Palm nuts have one of the highest amounts of EFA's.Essential Fatty Acid's, Most diet's are lacking this. Palm nuts, the part our fids eat is high in unsaturated fat, which is good for our Grey's also. Again, Safflowers are high in EFA's and are ok for our Greys, where no more than a half teaspoon of sunflower seeds should be given to them a day. One or two almonds a day are ok. Grey's receive a small amount of calcium from food or supplements, their not like most parrots, they don't absorb it well, a Grey receives the most from sunlight, unfiltered, or UVB Full-spectrum lighting. Read the ingredient's in Harrison's.LoL

One of the best sources for D3/calcium is Dark Green Leafy veggies, Dandelion leaf's being number 1.....Jayd

[crossfit]

thanks Jayd. I am thinking I got safflower and sunflower mixed up. I am planning to get lights set up soon. At the moment I can take Hawkins outside daily but come fall we get a lot of cold rain and he won't be able to go out. I want to get the lights sooner though just in case my outside time with every day isn't enough.

[Jayd]

Here's a thread I did not to long ago,might be helpful: http://www.greyforums.net/forums/showthread.php?188081-Calcium-Food-or-Sun

[Girltron]

Yeah so Harrison's seems to be mostly sunflower seeds, which I'd noticed. But it does come pretty highly recommended. So my solution was to feed approximately half Harrisons and half supplemented seed mixes that don't have sunflower seeds, and Francis does seem to be addicted to the seed mixes so he favors that more than any other part of his diet. If he eats 3 tablespoons of the seeds per day, plus maybe 2 of the Harrison's, and I estimate that he's probably actually eating 1/8 teaspoon of the oil when I consider the food he throws...is that too much? Francis is getting more exercise than ever in his big new cage and during his playtimes, but he's certainly not flying miles every day like he would as a wild bird eating a wild diet. It does sound like we need to back off on the almonds. Maybe I'll start alternating grapes and almonds as treats? They're probably the only two things he loves enough to accept as treats.

 

Eh I've got an Avian Sun bulb and hope if he's had a chronic D deficiency it will help him recover. My friend didn't have one, but she did open her windows often and I suppose sometimes he got direct sunlight that way. I'm very careful to include one dark green leafy vegetable in his veggie mix. What I do is pick one dark green leafy, one green veggie, one yellow/white veggie, one red/orange/purple veggie, and one root veggie each week and I rotate through them, providing two or three in each bowl of food. That should ensure he gets a pretty wide range of nutrients.

Edited May 31, 2010 by Girltron

[Jayd]

What your doing is really good, Harrison's is one of the best foods on the market. What makes these foods so good isn't the single ingredient, but the combination of all ingredients combined!!! The UVB is great...Thanks Jayd