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| Photo © Harrison's Bird Foods website |
Dr. Greg Harrison, the main developer of Harrison's Bird Foods, is a certified avian specialist with 34 years of experience in bird care. The good thing about Harrison's Bird Food is that all the necessary nutrition is included in the same food mix: you don't need to supply your budgies with extra vitamins or minerals.
With Harrison's Bird Food, you can avoid a wide range of problems that are associated with the low nutritional values from seed mixes: breathing problems, obesity, calcium deficiency, breeding problems and early death.
My avian vet explained me how budgies and children are the same when it comes to "being picky about food". If you give them the choice between a salad bowl or hamburgers with fries and mayonnaise, you know which one they will pick. Budgies will gorge down any kind of seed mix, because it's like their version of fries and mayonnaise.
Seed mixes don't contain enough calcium, iodine and vitamin A, and they contain too much fat, which is harmful to your budgie's health and may shorten their lifespan.
In fact, Harrison's Bird Food guarantees a lifespan for your bird that is three times longer than the average life span of a domesticated budgie. Most domesticated budgies die between the age of 3 and 7, and this is often due to malnutrition. My avian vet told me this repeatedly and I think that all budgie owners should know, because she is right about this. I have read about the benefits of pellet mixes before, but I never realized how important they were.
My avian vet immediately told me to change my budgies' diet when I told her that Frodo and Isla are eating seed mixes. Nowadays, I feed them The High Potency Fine mix, and they happily eat it up.
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| Photo © Harrison's Bird Foods website |
I know this may seem like a huge eye-opener, even a bit shocking to a lot of people. I also was left with one big question at the end: why do they keep selling seed mixes in pet stores if this is so bad for budgies?
First of all: not everything they sell at the pet store is good for your budgies. Think of all the sugar-loaded crackers and other treats that are more bad than good for your budgies' health.
Birds have been associated with eating seeds for centuries, but this is actually not how it should be. Budgies in the wild feed off grass seeds, plants and fruit. If they weren't exposed to so many dangers, they would outlive domesticated budgerigars.
People buy seed mixes for their budgies because they don't know better - and because everyone else does it - and because there's a beautiful picture of a budgie on the cover.
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| picture © comparestoreprices.co.uk |
The people who manufacture these seed mixes don't know how bad this is for birds, and anyway, they have to do their job. They have a business to run. They have to make money.
When my budgies started eating pellets, I could definitely tell the difference after a few days. They were more happy and chirpy than usual, they seemed to be more fit. Now, after one month, they are both in top condition. My mum already asked me to order the same pellet mix for her budgies.
In case you are interested, or if you want to read more, please check out their website: http://www.harrisonsbirdfoods.com/index.html
