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Cockatiel Food and Nutrition
Proteins
Proteins are very essential to the growth, maintenance and repair of all
bodies tissue. hence, our pet cockatiel also need some proteins in their
diets, to keep their good and healthy life. Actually all animals need proteins
to stay healthy, because the bodies and their organs composed mainly of various forms of
proteins. Proteins and water is the mains source of protoplasm, which is the component in each sell of animals. Of course, animals body contains millions of life cell.
Based on Matthew M.Vriends, there are two main categories of proteins, which is animal
proteins and vegetable proteins. However, proteins from vegetable have less nutrition compared to
proteins derived from animals. Meat, fish, eggs, and milk is the main source of animals
proteins. There were lots of poultry breeder which feed a supplement of fish, meat and liver-meal as a source of animals
proteins for their birds. Milk also can be use for this purpose.
If you intended to feed your birds with milk, there were some simple guidelines for you to follow. For this purpose, you can soak a white bread in milk and give this soaked milk to your cockatiel as a supplementary food. Some cockatiel will like it, but some cockatiels may take some time to used to this
technique. After your cockatiel used to this supplementary cockatiel food, they may even give this to their baby. However, this
technique I mean this soaked breed must be provided to your cockatiel in the morning. In the afternoon, you must collect all bread that is left by your pet cockatiel. this is because the soaked bread will sour very quickly and sour bread is very bad to your cockatiel health. One more important point that your
should be aware is that some cockatiel are very sensitive and may even had stomach/digestive upset if they taking this.
other than animals proteins, cockatiel also take vegetable proteins in their diets. The cockatiels get their
vegetable from variety of seeds and green food that we provided everyday. cockatiels really like green
vegetable, you can provide your cockatiels with variety of green food such as endive, curly kale, parsley, sprouting seeds,
Brussels, sprouts, cabbage heart, cucumber, Swiss chard, watercress, turnip greens and also succhini.
Normally green food will have only 1.5 percent to 4.5 percent proteins in their content. While many of the content is only water based.
Therefore, if you provide enough green food to your cockatiel, they will get more water source which will really help especially during hot temperature. if you want your cockatiel to get more
vegetable proteins, you can add more young or greens shoots. Compared to full grown
vegetable , young or green shoots will have more proteins.
Cockatiel feathers, beak and nails is mainly composed of keratin, which is proteins. therefore, during breeding
period, enough food which contain proteins is very important. If the cockatiels had any deficiency in
proteins, it can bring bad consequence. This will have much more effect on growing cockatiels compared to adult cockatiels. Based on a book that I read, shortage of protein in young cockatiel will also
diminish the nutritive value of any other dietary elements they may be receiving.
You should provide many type of "protein " to your cockatiel, this is because each source can have a different composition. You also must remember that even same type of food may have different level of protein if the food is obtain from different area. Based on estimation, for a standard cockatiel seed mixture. The protein content could vary which is between 16 percent to 19 percent. Based on some information that I get the protein from the cockatiel food can be best
utilized by cockatiel body if it is present with adequate intake of some vitamin and mineral.
If you want to feed your cockatiel with some animal protein, you may do so by providing some insect to your cockatiel diet. However, you must aware that even though the insect which have hard 'shell' have lots of protein, in the same time they are difficult to digest. Based on this fact, you may opt to give
invertebrate to your cockatiel instead. This can included mealworm, enchytrae
(white worm), flies, and their larvae.
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