i feel like i am going to puke my guts out.

i am never letting ivy crack a nut on her own again. as she was cracking one of her dinner mac nuts tonight, i saw green on the inside as she was opening it and immediately yanked it out of her mouth. the top came off and the whole nut was rotted and moldy. there were maggots crawling around on the inside of the shell. and there were NO signs of this from the outside. i am SO glad i've been watching her when she cracks nuts, it makes me sick to think about what could have happened if she ate that.

i hope she didn't ingest any of the mold, i got it out of her mouth really fast. i feel bad not letting her crack nuts anymore, but this cannot happen...

has this ever happened to any of you? how many of you crack your birds' nuts before serving them?

i can't stand it, ugh.....

right now we have roasted chestnuts as it is getting close to christmas. and we have to look for little holes no bigger than a pin head. that may be what is happened with the nuts there.


these are nuts for humans not birds and it is disheartening when we pay so much a pound for them then find that they are inindated with worms....

good thing you got it out of her mouth quickly.... . i am sure you will hear from others here...

wow, that tiny? i had no idea, that's terrifying.

i might end up just buying nuts already shelled. geez, it seems like so little is safe for ingestion by any creature these days.

thank you...

Emily

How old is Ivy? I was always told that you should crack them for the birds until they are at least a year old. Especially mac nuts are very hard on their beaks.

We bought a mac nut cracker from Gold Crown mac nuts. It is a coop run by farmers/growers in California. Angel is still not good about cracking her mac nuts. She wastes too much nut for me. Those things are expensive. I usually crack tham and sometimes shell them for her.

We sometimes get the moldy nuts. It depends on the kind of growing season they have. If it is moister than usual the nuts are not as good quality.

I'm sorry that happened.

Piaui is too lazy to crack his own nuts so I do it for him. I try not to crack them all the way but just enough that I can see inside and try to get him to crack them himself.

Maverick on the other hand loves to crack nuts...Perhaps with age they know which ones are bad?

I get mine from Gold Crown and I'm always amazed at what poor quality they can be.

A friend of mine owns llittleacresaviary.com He actually tastes all the food that he has packaged. His mac nuts are unshelled, HUGE, and good quality. I need to pick some up for myself, when I do I'll shoot you guys the info about them. He will ship too if you like them. If not, I can :-)

ivy is 7 months. we've been putting the mac nuts in the vice grip to crack the shell, since she has a hard time starting it herself. but the nut isn't open at that point. she pops it right open when we give it to her like that.

after this though, i will probably always be giving her completely unshelled nuts, or at least open ones. i will just have to give her more foraging type things.

thanks, hon...

has maverick ever rejected a bad nut??

that sounds wonderful about the unshelled nuts, thanks so much jeanne!!

He rejects some so I just assume they're not fresh.

I'm heading to Jose's on Friday, if he's got them (I hope he does) I'll pick up an extra bag in case you do want it. Oh, I forgot, I'll also take a picture of their snack dishes....Can you tell I've had a long week ;-)

oh, i wouldn't want them just yet! i still have 15lbs or so of shelled nuts to go through! i will just be cracking them all before serving.

i'd love to see the dishes! someone recommended to me making a mash, and she seemed to respond OK to that. it's still really hard to get her to eat any solids aside from mac nuts.

Emily, I always crack nuts here, Macs, Walnuts and Brazil, just enough to take a peek.