Mutations and pellets

[BeakerLuvsBunsen]

I heard once that mutations cannot digest pellets.
My dilemna is I have an american yellow mutation
and a green pacific... ive been mixing seeds and pellets in their food

should I be seperating the pellets in a seperate dish?
It doesnt seem like they are eating them...

any advice?

[Pado]

From my understanding its not that they can't digest the pellets but that the pellets because they are dry cause birds to drink more water - Parrotlets are sensitive to this and them drinking excess water is hard on their Kidneys - Mutations are more sensitive to this than Natural Greens.

My male likes Harrison's Pellets so I let him eat them - he doesn't eat them exclusively so I'm not worried.

I feed mine is a separate bowl - my female rarely touches them but will at times as the male is eating them - plus he feeds her so she is getting them anyway.

Some say not to feed the Mutations them at all but my thinking is if they are not on an ONLY Pellet diet they won't be drinking too much water.

I wouldn't put any Parrotlet on an all Pellet diet - not enough is know about this so I wouldn't take the chance.

[BeakerLuvsBunsen]

That makes sense. I bought harrisons because they werent really
eating the zupreem fruit pellets either....

maybe if I wet them down a little bit in another bowl?

[Cydney]

I have an american yellow male, and he has three separate food dishes. One has his Goldenfeast small hookbill seed mix, which is where he usually eats in the morning. Another dish has Harrison's fine pellets, which he usually snack on when he's been playing, and the third is for veggies, fruit, organic granola, dried fruit treats or whatever else he's getting for the day. I talked to my vet about it and she agreed that they should be on a strictly pelleted diet, as it might cause stress on their livers (as Pado said with the water thing).

[BeakerLuvsBunsen]

You guys might find this interesting
I found it on the international parrotlet society website
http://www.internationalparrotletsociety.org/pellet.html

[Cydney]

Oh the joys of sorting out bird nutrition. :P Just want to throw this out there, but the IPS includes pellets in their 'varied diet' recommendation. I think a lot of the kidney problems can be attributed to a strictly pelleted diet with no supplemental items. My vet has been seeing one specific parrotlet for over ten years who has been on Harrison's pellets and fresh veggies/fruits all his life and he's as healthy as they come, though I don't recall his color.

[Sally]

Yes, I cook pellets, seed, Goldenfeast and veggies into some breads and that is a small part of the diet. I believe in a VERY varied diet, mostly fresh foods. Baked nutritious foods too.

Not sure about mutations. I have heard it is best not to give http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/Sally11/breadsm.jpge them pellets, but I am not sure.

[Koki]

According to my vet, the color mutations of all species (budgies, cockateils, etc) including parrotlets develop problems when on pelleted diets. He says this is documented with statistical evidence. Although there are many 'ideas' as to why this is (e.g. the moisture of the food, not being able to digest, proteitn, etc.) the truth is vets do not know for sure why these problems occure, but work continues to find out.

My vet recommends no pellets for color mutations (even visual normals split to some mutation) of any of small Psitacids.