In aviculture most birds are fed a convenient diet, seed. It comes in its own little shell for protection, keeps well and you can buy it by the sack load.

Most birds in their natural environment would only eat seed in quantity during the late summer and early autumn time when it is naturally available. The rest of the time their diet is made of of plant  matter, fruits, berries, insects and even occasional carrion. Birds also have the opportunity to ingest part or even whole pieces of gravel and stones, often chalk will be taken for its calcium content as can limestone and snail shells.

So what can you do to increase your birds intake of key nutrients?

Well any good seed supplier should advise you that a seed mix alone is not sufficient for most birds needs. Even if it contains fruit, nuts and berries the mix will still lack certain important nutrients. So it is necessary to turn to a vitamin supplement.

There are two main ways to provide vitamins,

(a) a powder of liquid which can be added to the drinking water. This can be an unreliable method for several reasons, most birds don't actually drink the quantities of water required to provide a sufficient intake of the additive, its is also therefore very difficult to gauge how much water they have drunk how much has been splashed away or how much has simply evaporated.

(b) a powder which is dusted over fruit and or vegetables. By picking your birds favourite bit of fruit and dusting a vitamin powder onto it you are able to immediately see how much supplement has been ingested and when

So what is the benefit?

Right lets start with the one thing everyone agrees birds do not receive enough of, Calcium. Calcium is needed for the maintenance of bones, muscle and nerve function, the production of eggs during the breeding season and essential for the correct development of chicks. You can present Calcium to your birds in several forms, Chalk, Oyster shell grit, Cuttle Fish, Calcium Carbonate (limestone) or use Psittamix (there's the product plug). One of the main reasons for breeding birds to have small and infrequent clutches, soft eggs and poor post breeding recovery is simply lack of readily absorbable calcium. Now here is a thing, to be absorbed properly Calcium needs a little help from a Vitamin called D3 (cholecalciferol). D3 is normally made within the body from ultraviolet light which is absorbed by the feathers, but if you have a pet bird the cage is not in the window because it is too hot and probably for security reason too. So no direct UV light = reduced calcium absorption. Most if not all vitamin supplements will have D3 in them. Another idea which is now becoming popular is to place the special UV light tubes above your birds. They can be switched on for a few hours each day. On drawback is the UV light generated doesn't travel very far before it loses its strength so bulbs need to be relatively close to the birds and changed annually as they do wear out.

Iodine. This is another mineral most bird keepers are familiar with, it is often available as the little pink block attached to the bars of a cage that many parrots will destroy in a single sitting. iodine is good for the blood, its helps with the movement of oxygen around the body and increases the amount of oxygen which can be absorbed by the blood, in turn keeping the heart and arteries healthy.

Another Vitamin now Vitamin C, we all know about vitamin C when the winter get here, you find it in every cough and cold remedy for miles. Vitamin C is not just a remedy it protects too many people swear by taking vitamin C it wards off infections and a whole host of other aliments. What is has been proven to do is condition the skin and fortify the immune system. Good sources for vitamin C are Fruit and Vegetables, Supplements and Berries (hey we sell those too) Rose Hips being one of the most concentrated natural sources of vitamin C available.

B Vitamins and there is a whole range of them look after the nervous system. They are obtained from Green food stuff, cod liver oil and milk. Strangely enough there is a whole host of them in vitamin supplements, Psittamix had seven different ones listed on the tub. They also come from sprouting seeds which are always a good supplement to your birds diet. B vitamins are also required for growth particularly when young while there are huge stresses on the avian body. Nor enough can lead to nervous disorders such as feather plucking in African Greys, fits and reduced appetite.

Vitamin A is stored within the liver. A vitamin A deficiency is difficult to spot until it is quite often too late when the store is depleted. This can then lead to lowered breeding results, eye and gut infections and eye troubles. Vitamin A is especially low in seed mixture to a good supplement is needed to redress this balance. Parrot Palm Fruit Extract from Junglegold Ltd is packed full of Vitamin A and as such can act as an aphrodisiac on your birds.

Another Vitamin associated with fertility is Vitamin E also again found in quantity in Parrot Palm Fruit Extract. It is associated with kidney diseases which quite often can prove to be irreversible once discovered. Vitamin E is an anti-oxidant which prevents blood toxicity and balances the metabolism.

Now most birds at one time or another will injure themselves. Be it a bang on the side of the cage an a bleeding cere or something more serious. In these cases Vitamin K is the guy to help. Normally produced within the body by intestinal bacteria it can also be ingested via a food supplement. Note intestinal bacteria can be boosted by using a good quality probiotic. Green foods are a good natural source of Vitamin K. So how does Vitamin K help you injured bird, well it clots the blood prevents haemorrhaging and speeds up the time it take for a wound to heal, clever stuff eh.

So that is the vitamins covered but they are not a lot of good on their own and therefore need minerals to help in their work. Vitamin E for example may boost your birds libido but unless you have Selenium to help out much of the Vitamin E will be wasted. While on the reproductive front you will also need Sulphur and Magnesium. Iron is for bone growth along side Calcium and Copper. Cobalt is for blood production and Zinc in the correct amounts is essential for just about everything. Too much Zinc however as found in the paint on older cages can make a bird very ill and as is usual with so many of our avian friends a sick bird is a dead one.

Well that is it you are now an expert on what your bird requires for a healthy happy life, well vitamin and mineral wise at least. Correct feeding and the use of appropriate supplements will and quite often does double the life span of a bird.

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Last modified: Tuesday April 15, 2008