Seed diets are probably the single greatest threat to a bird, especially if you’re a Baby Boomer or Generation Xer that grew up watching Sylvester & Tweety/Roadrunner cartoons. Yes birds eat seeds but they eat many things in the wild. Birds like many animals spend most of their day acquiring calories. Foraging is part of their daily life which is why clipping a bird’s wings and keeping them in a cage is the exact opposite of what nature has constructed them for. That is why they need attention, toys, foraging materials, shredding material etc. and many times its best for them to have another feathered buddy to keep them company when we’re at work. But diet is what usually can cause a bird health problems and shortened life spans.
Seeds to a bird are like steak to us. They are very fatty and for that reason they’re very yummy. That’s one side of the coin. The other is that they have very little nutritional value. So if we ate steak and ice cream every day… you know that story ends and its no different for a bird. Sure they have seed diets for birds with fortified pellets that have vitamins and minerals but those are like topsy turvy Lucky Charms. Your bird will eat all the seeds and leave the pellets behind. Like what smart cats and dogs do when you try to put a medicine pill in a piece of cheese. They eat around the cheese and you’ll be left with a cheese coated pill. Don’t kid yourself. If your kid had his druthers that bowl of Lucky Charms would wind up a pile of cat food looking cereal shapes, completely void of marshmallows slowly getting soggy in a milk pool. So spend the couple of extra bucks and get Roudybush. Harrisons is also vet recommended but Roudybush has my hands down approval.
Use seeds only for treats. Seeds should only be 20%-25% of a bird’s diet, maximum. Your best option is to have it in different dishes (at least one seed dish per bird) so that when your bird is out he can forage through the seeds. But… just like Thanksgiving dinner, they’ll pick out what they want most, then work their way to the stuff they like least and eventually they leave the Lucky Charms cereal, i.e. “fortified nutritious biscuits” left to grow stale on the table after being tossed from the dish.
Seeds are also like sugar in the sense that they are a “hot” food. They can make the bird “hyper” for lack of a better term and if a hyper bird that is clipped, in a cage, all alone and has no way to expel that energy… then that has a tendency to lead to self mutilation, i.e. plucking. So be mindful of giving your bird seeds. Use them sparingly and make sure they have time to burn off the seed energy when they are allowed to eat it. Preferably only at playtime on their designated playpen.
I usually keep an old empty container of Kaytee Oat Groats, or one of their other varieties of the 11 oz. size, and use it to store seeds to easily dispense into the seed dishes. Its compact, easy to pour, yet its sealed in case it gets knocked over.
Birds love seeds so sometimes they get a bit overzealous for their treats. They’ll dig right in, manners be damned.
But nothing compares to the ultimate treat. The birdie crack that will allow you to do many things from bribes to tricks… Millet.