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A Bird's Diet: Bird Bread

© Mary Wilson

This article begins a series in which I will look at the various aspects of our birds' diets and what we, as bird owners, can do to enrich and enhance our birds' diets. I'll begin with that oftentimes-overlooked food - bird bread.

A quick visit to the recipe exchange of any website, such as the Recipe Xchange at birdsnways.com http://www.birdsnways.com/birds/rbreads.... or the fledgling recipe corner at my own website, Finches With Wishes, http://www.finches.org/members/recipe.ht... will show that there are as many versions of bird bread as there are bird owners. Some of us even have more than one version.

A quick look through the recipes will show that they are designed for a wide variety of birds. Some are made especially for larger birds such as Amazons and Macaws, while others are devoted to the small hookbills. Many recipes use boxed mixes as a base, which helps in the convenience department. Still, there are several things that we have to keep in mind when we're making bird bread.

First, the size of the ingredients must match the size of the bird. It's easy to get carried away throwing delicious and healthy foods into a batch of bird bread; I've done it myself. But when we are being avian culinary masters, we need to keep in mind that whole broccoli florets or large chunks of vegetables may frighten our parakeet, and our birds may ignore what they think is too big to eat. Second, I always add pellets to my bird bread. Why? Because they add nutrition. Bird bread is a great way to get healthy foods into our birds without their knowledge. Pellets can be ground in a blender or coffee grinder (be sure you wash all the coffee out first) and used as part of the flour or other base, or baked in whole. Once they have been baked into the mix, the birds can't separate them out and usually eat every last crumb of bird bread they receive.

Third, presentation is everything. My pionus enjoy a chunk of bird bread tossed into their treat dishes; however, my parrotlets look at the huge (to them) chunks as if they were going to attack. For them, and for my finches, I crumble the bread so that it doesn't look so intimidating. Parakeets, known to be finicky eaters, may find their first taste of bird bread comes crumbled along with their seeds.

I love bird bread as an addition to my bird's diet. It serves many functions, the primary one being variety. A bowl of seeds or pellets every day has to get boring. This way, healthy foods can be offered as a new presentation, and offering variety helps keeps our birds mentally stimulated and hence they avoid vices.

The copyright of the article A Bird's Diet: Bird Bread in Small Hookbills is owned by Veronica Armstrong. Permission to republish A Bird's Diet: Bird Bread in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.