I started feeding my greenwing of 30yrs. Nutri Berries . He loves them. Was brought up on hagen pellets fro birth.. Now he only wants nutriberries… He wastes quite a bit. But I recycle if clean. Question. Can this be his main diet? Also feed him lots of others foods
Hi David,
I have moved your question here to Ask Lafeber since it is specifically about our diets. Yes, Nutri-Berries can be fed as the daily diet. Nutri-Berries are formulated the same as a pellet, but they are not ground up. I like how Dr. Stephanie Lamb described them in her nutrition webinar last week – they are basically the next to last step of the pelleting process, but they are left whole rather than ground and made into a pellet. The difference when feeding Nutri-Berries is that you need to make sure he is eating most of each pellet without wasting too much. So now that you know he loves them, you need to reduce the number you give him at one time, and wait until those are consumed before you give him more. It is fine to place any tossed pieces back in his bowl as long as they didn’t land in poop. LOL It does take a bit more commitment from the owner than feeding pellets, since pellets prevent any selective feeding. But pellets can get boring and do not offer foraging exercise or the variety of tastes an textures that are more natural for a parrot. In the wild, parrots will also wast food when it is abundant – this helps re-seed the environment and feeds ground dwelling animals. In captivity, we tend to over feed because food dishes are so large. With Nutri-Berries, a large Macaw like yours will eat anywhere from 6-12 Nutri-Berries each day, depending on his metabolism, activity and other foods he eats. While you are training him to eat the Nutri-Berries more efficiently, you can also have a bowl with pellets available to him. Nutri-Berries can be fed instead of or along with pellets. I’m glad your guy loves his Berries! We also have other nutritionally balanced foraging diets – Avi-Cakes & Pellet-Berries. All of these can be fed alone or combined and he will be getting the balanced nutrition that he needs.
Thank you for visiting Lafeber’s,
Brenda
