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10 Nov 2017

Roudybush Diets Vs Regular Bird Pellets

Posted By : Guest

Roudybush began manufacturing handfeeding formulas and pelletized diets for pet birds in 1985. High quality ingredients and steam pelleting are used to ensure that potentially harmful organisms are not present in the finished products. Samples of every batch of feed are retained at the mill for quality assurance and random samples are tested quarterly for any evidence of contamination. When you buy Roudybush products you can be assured that your birds are eating a high quality diet based on solid, sound nutritional information.

For decades the standard diet for most birds kept in captivity has been a mixture of seeds and nuts. This diet was based on the assumption that that is what these birds eat in their natural environments. Nutritional deficiencies seen in birds kept on seed diets have been better characterized and documented, making it clear that these diets are harmful; however, many people continue to feed seed and nut diets, with or without other nutritional supplementation. Today there are many bird pellet foods available in pet stores for customers to choose from.

Why is Roudybush bird diets considered over the past 30 years, to be one of the best in the world?

Roudybush diets offer many advantages over other commercially available bird pellets. Roudybush uses a steam pelletizing process that preserves more of the fiber in the diet than extrusion does, providing a diet that is healthier for your birds’ intestinal tract. This is why some pet birds suffer from diarrhea or have loose stools when they eat certain bird pellet brands.

Why Are Roudybush Diets Steam Pelleted Versus Extruded?

There are three main reasons for this. Steam pelleting allows a milder processing of the feed preserving some nutrients that are destroyed by the higher temperatures and pressures of extrusion. These nutrients can be added in excess before extrusion or supplemented by application of nutrients after extrusion to overcome this issue, but Roudybush prefer to avoid the lack of control inherent in these processes when they can. Steam pelleting results in a denser pellet than is generally produced by extrusion. This allows the use of less packaging material and requires less storage space for the same weight of food. This results in less environmental impact from packaging manufacture and disposal and in easier handling all the way from them to you. The third reason for using steam pelleting is that it saves energy compared to extrusion. The steam pelleting process uses many times less energy than extrusion of the same amount of feed. This is, again, an environmental concern.

Why Doesn’t Roudybush Add Sugars To Their Diets?

The main reason Roudybush don’t add sugar to their diets, except for the diets of birds adapted to high levels of sugar, is to avoid the growth of yeast. Yeast, Candida albicans, is a common oral and gut infection in birds. Birds resist yeast infections by passing the yeast through the gut at a rate that keeps the level of yeast low. In the presence of sugar, however, yeast thrives and multiplies and can infect a bird eating a diet containing sugar. If yeast infections are common in your bird or if you are treating a yeast infection in your bird now, eliminate sugar from the bird’s diet if possible. This will reduce the rate of reproduction of the yeast leading to easier resistance to or elimination of infection in your bird.

Why Doesn’t Roudybush Add Colours To Their Diets?

Colours in feed can cause a number of problems. Many birds will select specific colours out of the mix and avoid others leading to waste. The synthetic pigment used in many diets can stain the bird or furnishing in the area where the bird is kept. This has kept birds out of shows and led to expensive cleaning or dying of stained materials. These synthetic pigments also show up in your bird’s droppings and interfere with the use of droppings as a diagnostic tool by your veterinarian. At a critical time in your bird’s life this can result in a delay in diagnosis and treatment of a health issue.

Why Don’t Roudybush Have Different Formulations For Different Birds?

Roudybush do, where it is appropriate. They have a diet specifically for hand-feeding squab, the young of pigeons and doves; a family of diets for feeding birds with specific nutrient requirements based on their health or condition; a family of diets for birds that have a high sugar intake, including lories and hummingbirds; both breeder and maintenance diets with greater or lesser amounts of fat; and hand-feeding diets for granivorous birds. Roudybush don’t make the popular species specific diets. Why? There simply isn’t enough reliable information available to make these kinds of diets and be sure that the bird’s requirements are met. They believe the companies that are making them are skating on thin ice if they claim they know the nutrient requirements of specific species of birds and They don’t want to join them.

Aren’t Seeds The Natural Diet For Birds?

No, but they can be part of it. Birds in the wild eat a variety of foods including other plant materials besides seeds and animal material such as insects and other small creatures. Some birds such as Keas will even attack sheep or other large animals. Birds will also vary their food intake to accommodate changes in nutrient requirements such as when they are feeding chicks, which require much more concentrated diets than their parents. Seeds alone do not provide all of the nutrients needed for growth or maintenance. Some of the nutrients required for maintenance are often deficient in seed diets and include vitamin A, vitamin D3, zinc, copper, manganese, calcium, sodium, vitamin B12, selenium and iodine. Growing birds would need other nutrients in addition including additional total protein, methionine, lysine, tryptophan, phosphorus, and some of the other vitamins. One other thing to keep in mind when we look at the diets of birds in the wild is that wild populations often fail. That is they either fail to produce young or in severe cases have high mortality of adults. When you look at what birds eat in the wild and use it as amodel for what they should eat in captivity, you may be choosing a year when young died in the nest or adults starved from difficult foraging conditions. Feeding a formulated diet allows you to avoid these potential problems and concentrate on other requirements of your birds.