It has come to my attention that some who purchase and feed our OWD diets to their flocks may not completely understand the premise of our foods. Therefore I would like to take the opportunity to explain the intended use of our foods.

When we first began developing “BirD-elicious!” which is now simply named “Origins Wild Diet” we envisioned people feeding our foods as one of the daily main staple foods for their companion bird. We have never thought of our food as a stand alone total and complete daily diet.

OWD Medium and Large Exotic Bird Foods

Birds who spend most of their time up in the canopies of their respective forests may not eat as much seed as smaller, ground-foraging birds. Their nutritional requirements are a little different.

The bulk of our daily diets, such as African Grey, Eclectus, Cockatoo, and Macaw can be fed as ¾ of the daily diet with ¼ fresh foods as the remainder of daily nutrition. We encourage feeding fresh, organic tropical fruit, fruit-like veggies such as bell pepper, zucchini, okra, cucumber, most squash, peas and organic only corn, and other veggie-like fruits (produce with the seed inside the “fruit”), sprouted items, fresh organic young and tender leaves (parsley, cilantro, arugula, dandelion), and meal worms.

OWD Small and Tiny Exotic Bird Seed Mixes

Where our pre-sprouted OWD Cockatiel and OWD SeeD-elicious! foods are concerned we envision caregivers spending a little more time preparing their bird’s daily foods. These various species may be little, but they have huge appetites!

Any of our pre-sprouted seed diets should, in our opinion be fed at the rate of 50% OWD and 50% fresh organic, or at minimum 25% OWD and 75% fresh organic foods. Our seed-type diets are designed in mind of those birds who participate in a lot of ground foraging in the wild. It makes sense they would require sprouted seeds in their diet, but their overall diet should NOT consist of all seed. While sprouted and pre-sprouted gently dehydrated seed is healthier than dry seed, no bird should live on seed alone, not even budgies or soft bills. In the wild, these species would also be consuming some amount of young, tender leaves, insects, and veggies like carrots, yams, broccoli flowers, cauliflower, cabbage, flowers, nectar and more. Therefore, the astute caregiver would be wise to feed a lot of these items fresh and organic.

General OWD Feeding Instructions

Our package labels may instruct to feed 25% to 100% OWD foods, but we have always maintained that birds require fresh, organic foods as well. The moisture in fresh food helps drive nutrients directly into the cells and metabolic system. Whereas dry food must be totally digested and the nutrients absorbed more slowly through the digestive walls before entering into the metabolic system.

Our foods are designed for people with busy lifestyles and/or those who do not fully understand how to properly mix fresh foods for overall nutritional balance. Any diet that consists strictly of fresh foods should be laboratory-tested for nutritional balance, not nutritional completeness because there is no such model for exotic birds to date.

Finally, when first starting our company, we endeavored to revolutionize the way bird lovers were feeding their birds at the time. Decades prior to formulating our foods, the majority accepted that pellets were THE way to feed birds. We saw right from the start the lack of integrity feeding highly processed foods carried. Especially with the notion they were a “total and complete” daily diet for intrinsically wild-at-heart exotic birds – we do not believe most commercial foods come anywhere near “total, complete and balanced nutrition” for exotic birds of any kind, wild or captive. Our Origins Wild Diet may come closer to a total, complete and balanced diet than any other commercial, highly processed food for captive companion birds.

OWD Foods Are Not Highly Processed

In fact, our foods are not considered highly processed by industrial standards; our foods are considered minimally processed and raw due to the type of processing we use. Furthermore the definition of “pellets” does not rule over our OWD foods since our foods are not processed using temperatures of 160 degrees F or more (known as “cold-pressed,” “pressed” and “extruded.”) Instead, OWD is gently dehydrated usually at lower than 115 degrees F. Plus, we do not extrude or press our food, both of which depletes naturally occurring digestive enzymes, alters protein and carbohydrate molecules, destroys many vitamins and some trace minerals. Our OWD foods retain almost all of the original nutrition, therefore, removing the requirement that potentially harmful synthetic vitamins be added back in via a cheap source of carrier oil. Our OWD foods are usually more moist than highly processed kibble. Still, if you want to feed more OWD and less fresh food, it is a prudent idea to rehydrate our foods, so your bird receives the amount of moisture its system requires while driving nutrients deep into the cells and metabolic system.

Our OWD foods are naturally delicious and purely nutritious, but in our opinion fresh, organic foods still need to be fed along with our foods to some percent.

Happy foraging!

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