about parrot nutritional needs? I am not convinced that my medical doctor knows about my nutritional needs, and not sure my vet knows the nutritional needs of my birds. When a person goes to their doctor and there are nutritional deficienies, they send us to a nutritionist, what do avian vets do?

What are your thoughts on this as there are so many conflicting opinions of healthy parrot diets? An example is how many nuts a day do you feed your scarlet macaw? My guess is it depends on what else you feed them during the day.

Are you as perplexed as I am, are we feeding our fids a proper diet? What do you do about measuring the food thrown over the side of the cage that they are not eating? I think about this every day when I clean and vaccum up their food from the floor.

I guess it is going to depend on who you want to believe. When I first brought home Sophie I found myself completely perplexed by the whole nutrition thing.
My on line friends were driving the point home hard "don't feed pellets to Ekkies"
Yet my avian vet says 80% pellets 20% veggies and other. Preferably Harrison's by the vets account.
Then my on line friends said "oh Harrison's is the worst for Ekkies!!!"
So I went back and asked my vet. Who has 5 Eclectus all over 10 years old and lived their life eating Harrison's.
The breeder I got Sophie from weened her onto Kaytee Exact. Which is what all his birds eat.
By now I bet your starting to think I feed Harrison's eh? lol Nope.

I listened mostly to my on line friends. Even though my vet has studied avian nutrition and has Ekkies. It was about experience verses education in the end for me.

No, my vets are great when it comes to physiology, diseases, conditions, treatments, medication, surgery, etc but, when it comes to avian diet, they don't know diddly squat. They recommend Harrison's for every single bird, regardless of the species, but I've done a lot of research on their dietary needs, in general, and on soy, in particular, and I would not feed them anything made with soybeans. Plus, I also make sure they don't get a lot of sunflowers or peanuts (Harrison's pellets are made of sunflower seeds, peanuts and soybeans). They even recommend pellets for canaries even though their natural food (seeds) which Nature only took millions of years to evolve them to eat, are inexpensive, plentiful and of good quality. That makes no sense whatsoever!

But, in reality, I never did expect vets to know much about avian diet and I think anybody who does needs to realize that avian vets are also regular vets so they don't only know about all the different species of companion birds (and we are talking about A LOT of species here) but also about the physiology, conditions, diseases, medications, treatments, testing, etc. for dogs, cats, horses, cows, rabbits, ferrets, rats, iguanas, snakes, etc. No one person can be expected to retain that much knowledge.

I agree... as much as I love my vets, both small animal and the equine guys I work for, when it comes to nutrition it's just not where their training lies. They treat... they don't necessarily prevent thru holistic nutrition. Plus, they are constantly bombarded with the sales reps from the different companies... so their opinions are often swayed by the reps. (In my opinion)

I'm with Jim on this one. I too lean more heavily toward the experienced advice over the vet education on nutrition.

Not that education doesn't have it's place along with certain testing. And I would certainly be listening to what a vet has to say about a problem.
But when it comes down to what I actually feed my birds on a daily basis, I suspect my choice is different from theirs.

The Feeding Feathers yahoo group is a good one to join if ya want to get down to the nitty gritty of things. Those women have done their homework and then some.

I finally found a wonderful avian vet. He is the best and Ruby "behaves" for him. He always tells me lots of tips and goes over what I feed her, etc. I do have to drive clear across Houston to get to him - but I feel it is worth it. I went to a vet once that had their avian certificate - but no experience. It didn't go so well. All I went for was a wing and nail clip and well, I had one stressed out paniced bird that I was worried about. Never again!

That's a toughy. I would say that Pi wastes appx 3/4 of his feed per day. Peggy is a guts and wastes nothing. What she flicks she goes down and picks back up later.

Diet of any captive animal is hard for humans to modify, whether it be a rabbit, kangaroo, emu to a hawk.

Check out the birds natural habitat. that gives you your best guide. If the foods you give are freely available there.
If nuts are not freely available then I wouldn't give the nuts.

Most commercial foods are now adapted to specific requirements, in Australia we have a standard that manufacturers have to follow.
I can be sure that my birds are getting their daily requirements in the seed alone.
Whatever else I give them is a bonus, a treat if you like. Fresh foods like corn on the cob, apple, nectarine etc. anything I see the wild cockies eating mine get in captivity. Along with branches from my trees in my yard that are native to Australia. These have their own kind of nut which my two will devour along with stringing the branches. I give Peggy peanuts, Pi isn't interested. Peggy doesn't really eat them, she just likes craking open the shells.

You will soon know if you are not feeding correctly, your bird will get sick. Check the crop, is it full? Weigh your bird, is it the correct weight? Look at the beak color.

This is what I do and my thoughts. I have never asked my vet what to feed my birds. I just look outside at the wild ones and watch what they are eating and add a commercial food to it.