Your Care Package
Announcement: We are in the process of converting our flock onto a healthier diet. This will be a long process, due to many of our breeders being adults and on full seed diets when we acquired them. Depending on where the parents of your baby are on this conversion, your baby’s diet may vary from what is listed below. Your care package will reflect this difference.
We will send a care package home with you that will include the food that your baby is currently eating. It is very important NOT to change their diet during their transition home. They could stop eating and perish!
We offer our birds a variety of food, including: pellet, seed, millet spray, egg food, and fresh fruits and vegis. We encourage you to do the same. Your care package will include your bird’s preferred pellet and/or seed, as well as some spray millet. Note: Size/portion included in each care package will vary depending on our current stock availability. Food may not be in original packaging, due to our bulk orders.
- Our handfed babies are fed Roudybush formula and so usually prefer our pellet of choice: Roudybush. We buy either the crumble or nibbles size, depending on bulk availability. Pellets should be kept available to your bird all the time. They do not need to be thrown out or exchanged at the end of the day. Please refill or replace as needed.
2. Some of our babies are split with some preferring the pellet, while others will only eat our seed mix. All of our seed-eating birds, who are budgie size or smaller, eat Kaytee’s Supreme for Finch (can be bought at Petco—cheaper if purchased online for store pickup). We find that the canary seed’s higher protein added to the otherwise parakeet-base seed in this mix has been very beneficial for growing healthy feathers. We do not feed plain “parakeet seed” mixes to our budgies for this reason, as they usually lack the canary seed. Seed mixes should be monitored to be sure they aren’t left covered in shaft (shaft is the shell of the seeds. Your bird will shell their seed and leave the shafts building up on top). Most birds will dig through the shafts (throwing them everywhere) to find additional seed, but other birds will simply go hungry, believing that they’ve run out of food (even though there’s more under the shafts). For this reason, we simply throw out and replace the seed mixes for our aviary birds once a day.
3. Your care package will also include some spray millet. You will need to buy more. A vet I worked with in Phoenix once told me that millet is like a medicine for our small birds. It’s an important item to offer when a bird is weaning, molting, sick, or when stressed (like adjusting to a new home!) Please keep millet available for your new baby for at least the first week after bringing him home. The transition from breeder to owner can be stressful. While he/she is learning the ropes of his new environment, millet will be something easy for him to recognize. We find that hanging a spray of millet near the water dish helps our babies quickly find the essentials.
(Other: I’m often asked about the calcium and vitamin supplements that we provide our aviary and breeder birds. It is made by Oropharma, called: Calci-Lux and Omni-Vit. I order mine online. This is NOT included in your care package. Please see the post “Other Stuff” for more information.)
