Understanding the "Why" Behind Our Foods
We believe that after decades of all of us feeding highly processed commercial bird foods there is one fact learned — there is no one food that offers total nutrition without adding fresh foods to our birds’ diets. Exotic companion birds require fresh, raw foods added to their daily diets in order to thrive.
The same holds true when feeding BirD-elicious! Origins Wild Diet®.
Although we have gone to great lengths to ensure that our foods contain all of the essential nutrients your bird needs in order to thrive, including the most basic proteins, fatty acids, essential carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, there is nothing that can compare with Nature’s fresh, raw nutrition. And even though we take care to gently dehydrate our foods, ensuring that the digestive enzymes remain active and alive, adding additional prebiotic and probiotic foods to your bird’s daily diet will only help ensure quality, vibrant health!
So while we believe that our foods are the best on the market for your exotic companion bird, we strongly encourage you to feed the following foods to your bird on a daily basis to ensure your bird continues to thrive:
- Organic hard-boiled egg whites (no yolk) for “animal protein” and the basis for building collagen.
- Fresh, organic dark berries for the high amount of antioxidants they contain and the polyphenols in the way of anthocyanins; strong anti-cancer properties.
- Fresh, organic tropical fruits for the high amount of “Lysine”, an essential amino acid lacking in so many foods the body cannot synthesize on its own.
- Fresh, organic tender, young greens like barley grass and wheat grass. These are teeming with digestive enzymes and naturally occurring vitamins and minerals as well as chlorophyll, a very powerful antioxidant.
- Fresh, organic red bell peppers and red grapefruit for the high amount of beta-carotene, the pre-cursor to vitamin A.
- Fresh, organic herbs. Herbs are known for their anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal properties. When fed fresh they provide natural digestive enzymes, naturally occurring vitamins, minerals and volatile oils similar to what birds would consume in the wild. Also be sure to feed fresh organic basil for the naturally-occurring iodine for good thyroid support.
- Additional organic flax seed oil and hemp seed oil at the ratio of 2:1 respectively to support your bird’s high metabolic energy requirements. This will also help the skin remain supple and the feathers shine. If the uropygial gland (preening gland) is plugged this will help unplug the gland.
Limit these foods, but be sure to feed occasionally:
- Sprouted organic seed for the naturally occurring digestive enzymes, vitamins and minerals they contain.
- Sprouted organic grains specific to the location your species of bird originates from. But feed in extreme moderation.
- Sprouted organic legumes specific to the location your species of bird originates from. But feed in extreme moderation.
We strongly discourage feeding the following:
- Cooked grains: These are high in gluten, lectins and dead starches. Gluten is an indigestible protein birds cannot digest and absorb. Lectins are carbohydrate-binding proteins that do not allow carbohydrates to be used correctly. “Lectins’ stickiness allows them to bind with the lining, particularly the villi, of the small intestine. Perhaps the most insidious impacts lectins can leave in their wake is this: leaky gut. Leaky gut is a term for the breach in the intestinal lining created by lectins hand in hand with other antinutrients. Once the intestinal breach exists, lectins and other particles (like partially digested food, toxins, etc) can “leak” into the bloodstream.” (Ref: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/lectins/#axzz2bJI2Puba) Dead starches lack “amylase”, the digestive enzyme that aids in the breakdown of starches. Because birds lack this digestive enzyme in their mouth, an enzyme that humans have in their mouth, birds cannot efficiently breaking starches down until the lower gut where amylase is present in the endocrine system. This places a strain on the overall endocrine system and may lead to pancreatitis, diabetes and/or hepatic lipidosis (fatty liver disease).
- Cooked Legumes: These are high in lectins and starches and should be avoided for the same reasons as cooked grains. In addition cooked legumes are also high in the amino acid “Arginine”. The FDA has now taken Arginine off the list of essential amino acids due to the fact that living creatures consume such an abundance of foods containing Arginine it is no longer considered an “essential” amino acid, i.e. one that requires consumption in order to complete the protein nutritional profile. In other words, Americans are consuming so many grains and legumes in all of the highly processed foods we consume, all high in Arginine, that we no longer need to find sources of Arginine for our diet. The same holds true for the highly processed pet foods we feed to our pets.
- Vegetables that are in the “true” botanical classification of “vegetables”. These are extremely high in the indigestible fiber “cellulose”. Cellulose is mainly used by the digestive tract as a mere laxative and offers no nutritional value at all. In fact it actually leaches nutrients out of the digestive tract as it passes through scraping and scrubbing the digestive tract. While humans with our long and wide digestive tract may need a good and thorough cleaning, especially for those of us that consume meat products, birds have a short and narrow digestive tract and consume mostly plant matter. Therefore they do not need laxatives. Nature has provided them mostly berries, fruit, tender grasses and herbs to gently flush their digestive tract with pectin and hemicellulose. When we force-feed our birds vegetables with cellulose tightly woven in, such as broccoli, carrots, turnips, etc., our birds are forced to consume the cellulose if they want to obtain the nutrients contained in the remainder of the vegetable. Unfortunately the cellulose leaches the nutrients of the vegetable from the digestive tract as it passes through rendering very little overall nutritional value when all is said and done. But when foods packed with pectin are fed, the pectin acts like a sponge, both delivering nutrients and flushing toxins at the same time. This is why when you compare feather color between birds on a high fruit diet to birds on a high vegetable diet you will see deeper, bright feather color in the birds fed a high fruit diet! Vegetables leach nutrients; fruit saturate the body with nutrients.
Now that you are armed with all of this information you are ready to feed BirD-elicious! Origins Wild Diet® Simply The BEST Bird Food!®
~”Feeding birds really, really well!”™…since 2003!