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Feeding Cage Birds

Improper feeding is the primary cause of disease and death in pet birds. Balanced diets are achieved by offering a variety of foods.

SEEDS: The basic diet for most pet birds is a variety of seeds. Commercial mixtures such as finch, canary, parakeet, and parrot seeds have most of the essential seeds, but must be supplemented with a variety of others. Supplements may include health food, treat, conditioning, molting, or song food. Fresh seeds are an excellent addition and can be found in back yards and fields. The most common seeds include rye grass, timothy, cockspur, and plantain.
GREENS: Greens are a valuable addition to a bird's diet. They do not cause diarrhea, but create more urine production, adding more fluid to the droppings. Birds may overeat greens at first, but if fed consistently, they will eat only a small amount. Good table greens include lettuce, endive, carrot tops, and spinach. Good backyard greens are dandelion, chickweed, and fresh branches.
RIPE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES: These are part of a balanced diet for a bird, but should never exceed 25% of the diet. Examples are oranges, apples, grapes, cherries, green beans, peas, and corn on the cob.
TABLE FOODS: Since your bird can safely eat any "people" food, (with the exceptions of avocados and raw rhubarb, which can result in death), feeding table foods is a method of adding variety and interest to the diet. Start by introducing small amounts so the bird will not be frightened. Foods which are good but which must be removed from the food dish the same day because of spoilage- include cottage cheese, cooked cereal, baby foods, macaroni, and eggs (hard boiled or scrambled). Eggs are excellent especially during molting. More stable foods are toast with butter, peanut butter, and jam, pound cake, sweet rolls, doughnuts, cheese, crackers, and cookies.
VITAMINS: Always use a bird vitamin (A and D-3) with seeds. The vitamin B complex should be supplemented also. Pet birds hull their seeds and lose much of the natural B vitamin. We feel that Linatone best meets these requirements.
MINERALS: Minerals are also an essential part of the daily diet. The best sources are cuttlebones, mineral blocks, milk, oyster shells, and egg shells. Budgerigars require iodine supplementation in their diet because of thyroid dysplasia.
LIQUIDS: Change the water in your bird's cage twice a day to keep it clean. Liquids besides fresh water may be offered. Some birds are fond of nectars. Milk is excellent and can be added to the drinking water, but must be changed the same day. Remember to change the cage's paper - not litter - every day.
GRIT: Grit is not required for those species of birds that hull their seeds, but canaries and finches do need it. Although many birds seem to enjoy picking at it, over-eating grit can irritate and obstruct the gastrointestinal tract. If grit is used, it should be presented in a grit/mineral/ salt mixture.

Methods to Broaden a Bird's Diet

Many birds develop poor eating habits and thus suffer from malnutrition. Although it may be difficult to overcome these bad habits, persistence usually pays off. Do not try to starve the bird into eating new foods, because a small bird can die in 48 hours if it doesn't eat. Try the following methods:

Sweeten the water and then add other nutrients later, such as juices, milk, and neo-mullsoy (a liquid soy protein made by Syntas for infants allergic to milk formula available at pharmacies without prescription).
Introduce only small amounts of new foods.
Feed hot foods such as hot nuts, cereals, cheese, and soup.
Mix new foods with basic seed.
Place new foods below a mirror or adjacent to a favorite toy.
Try feeding outside cage.
Change the bird from ad-lib feeding to three 15 minute feedings.
Hand or spoon feed.

Microwaving Seeds

Here's how to kill the bacteria that are commonly found in commercial bird seed mixtures, and improve their nutritional value.

Put seeds in 9x11 glass pan about 1" deep, and microwave the seed on high for 6 minutes, stirring every two minutes with a clean spoon, then let cool. (Parakeet, canary, and finch seeds don't need to be microwaved)
Mix up: (per 1 lb of seed)
- 1 tablespoon of Linatone
- 1 tablespoon of Calcium (Cuttle Bone, scrape with spoon)
- 1/3 cup of ground-up cat food
Gradually add crushed bird pellets.
Mix this together with the seed.
Refrigerate in an airtight plastic container (No coffee cans!!!!). Use as needed for feeding.

(Reprinted in part from a text by Dr. Ted Lafeber, Niles, Ill., Veterinary Profession Topics, University of Illinois.)
For recipes for bird food you can make, click here.

Birds and Bacteria

Like humans, bird's bodies normally contain both good bacteria, which are necessary to kill off organisms that can cause disease, and bad bacteria, which do harm to the bird's health. The balance of the two is critical for your bird.

Our pet birds are exposed to abnormal bacteria every day. If the bird's immune system is in good condition, it will easily prevent these bacteria from starting disease. One natural way to defend your bird's health is to maintain the health of their own beneficial bacteria with a proper diet and good care. Remember, every day a bird is sick is like being sick for a week for a human. Protect your bird's health with excellent nutrition, a clean environment, minimal stress, and lots of love. Keep your birds separated from any sick birds. Finally, keep in mind that birds are very good at hiding illness, so to catch hard-to-spot infections, get blood work and cultures done at least once a year.

Gram Stains and Cultures

The health of your bird depends on the balance of bacteria in their system. Your bird needs a normal population of good bacteria to keep the bird's acid-alkaline balance (pH) correct so that food can be digested properly, and to help the bird fight off abnormal bacteria and stay healthy. To find out if this balance is where it should be, we do Gram stains and grow bacterial cultures. Before we examine a sample from your bird, we stain it to make the various bacteria easier to see. This test is called a Gram stain after its inventor, a Danish physician named Hans Christian Jorchim Gram. The bacteria that stain blue are called Gram positive bacteria, and the ones that stain pink are called Gram negative. The Gram positive bacteria themselves come in two general varieties: circular bacteria called cocci, and elongated ones called rods. If the Gram stain indicates a problem, we will want to do a culture. A culture is a colony of bacteria grown in a laboratory from your pet's sample. It gives us the opportunity to examine the bacteria present in the original sample in more detail.

Your bird should have low numbers of Gram positive bacteria in its throat. If your bird has many Gram positive bacteria in its throat, then a culture is needed to find out why.

The bird's intestinal tract normally contains Gram positive bacteria to help with digestion. The numbers of bacteria in the intestine are larger than in the throat and should be a mixture of rods and cocci. If there were only one kind of bacteria, either all rods or all cocci, it would indicate an imbalance in the bacteria populations, in which case a culture would help us determine the causes of the abnormal counts.

Canaries and finches normally have very little bacteria in their digestive tract. so if their Gram stains show a large number of any bacteria, they should be cultured.

There are many bacteria that can be disease producers in birds, and that are not natural to birds, so birds have no resistance to them. Many of these are Gram negative bacteria. This group of bacteria has many members, many of them commonly found in the digestive tracts of mammals. As a result, mammals, including man, can expose our birds to these foreign bacteria. Contamination of food by hands or utensils that are not clean can introduce large numbers of Gram negative bacteria into a bird's system.

Baby formula allowed to sit in the refrigerator will be teeming with Gram negative bacteria in only thirty minutes. Water in cage cups, especially if fortified with water soluble vitamins, can easily be contaminated with bacteria. If not removed from the cage within 4 hours, table food can carry the bacteria. Many dry seed mixes carry abnormal bacteria in a dormant state: as soon as the seed hulls end up in the water cup, bacteria start to grow. Even tap water can contain Gram negative bacteria.

A culture lets us reliably identify abnormal bacteria. Then we can do a test to determine the best antibiotic to kill the bacteria that are present. Using the proper antibiotic for the appropriate amount of time is the best way to insure that the bird's natural bacteria can regenerate, and that the bird will not be back with a new infection in a few weeks.

Antibiotics

Bird owners, without the benefit of a culture, can purchase many antibiotics for their birds over the counter. And that seems to be perfectly workable, at first glance. After all, most of us have at one time or another seen a doctor for an infection, been put on antibiotics without having a culture done, and have gotten better. This doesn't work as well for a bird, however, for several reasons.

The first is that the most readily available pet store antibiotics just don't work. The bacteria have been exposed to those antibiotics before, and over the generations have developed resistance to them. Next, if the bird doesn't improve immediately, and a culture is needed, the previously used antibiotic will often cause the culture to yield inaccurate results. To really stop some of these avian infections, many times we need to use two antibiotics together. To do this, one needs a good knowledge of which antibiotics will complement each other. Finally, the overuse of antibiotics predisposes the bird to fungal and yeast infections (the overgrowth of a type of fungus that is harmful to birds and mammals), and poses a threat to the bird's natural bacteria. Giving your bird antibiotics without a culture can end up destroying the very bacteria necessary to keep the bird's metabolism in balance.

Which antibiotics do we usually use? Well, ampicillin and amoxicillin are man-made antibiotics from the penicillin family. Amoxicillin was developed to prevent Gram positive bacterial resistance, and ampicillin is commonly used for both Gram negative and positive bacteria, though many Gram positives develop a resistance to it. These are generally poor choices unless they are used with a culture and sensitivity report that say they will work, but they are good antibiotics to combat cat bites.

Piperacillin, a man-made injectable antibiotic designed especially for very difficult bacteria, and trimethaprim-sulfa, an enhanced sulfa drug, are great antibiotics for deep infections and infections caused by bacteria called anaerobes, which will only grow in an oxygen-free environment.

Tetracycline is a fungus-derived antibiotic, often used in medicated water for birds. Very often, it is not an effective antibiotic and will cause fungal or yeast infections when used over long periods.

Erythromycin is another fungus-derived medicine, and is good for Gram positive infections, but because most infections are Gram negative its usefulness is very limited.

Vibramycin (a tetracycline derivative) is used to treat psittacosis, a disease of birds caused by a virus-like organism called chlamydia, and communicable to humans. Because it is broken down before it goes into the intestinal tract, Vibramycin does not generally cause a problem with yeast overgrowth.

A new family of man-made antibiotics called Quinolones includes Baytril, Ciprofloxacin, and Nofloxacin. Most bacteria have not been exposed to them, so these drugs work well. The manufacturer claims that bacteria will not develop resistance to these antibiotics. As with any antibiotic, however, some bacteria in your birds will be naturally resistant.

It is very important to give antibiotics until a second culture indicates that the infection is gone. Culturing a second time is the best way to prevent over treatment, with its risks for the bird, or under treatment, which could lead to the bird becoming a carrier of a resistant strain of the bacteria. Infections in birds are often secondary and aggravating to an internal organ problem. The bird can't tell you that his kidneys hurt and the medication is really not helping, or that his thyroid is so big he can't breathe. This, again, is where a veterinarian's knowledge and experience with your bird is so valuable.

It's our job to make sure your pets are cared for professionally, with compassion, and at the very highest level of quality. As you can see, we use precise knowledge and specific procedures to care for your birds. We want you to know how much we care about your birds (as well as your dogs and cats). It is very important to us that you understand how to keep your birds alive and well.