Complete Psittacine by Eb Cravens
This month we continue our discussion of feeding nuts to parrots. For years I have watched my psittacines pick up a shelled walnut or almond, hold it in one claw, and peacefully gnaw it to bits, gleaning nourishment. The problem always seemed to be the pile of uneaten crumbs and refuse dropped down at the feeding station or on the ground. It could appear to be about 40 per cent or more of the entire chunk! I came to the conclusion that the parrots were mashing them up seeking out the oils and essential fatty acids. But it still seemed like an unnecessary waste.
So, it all started with peanuts. There was a lot of adverse publicity during the 1990s about feeding peanuts to psittacines due to the dangers of aflatoxins in old harvest, damp, or otherwise inferior quality peanuts. At that time I decided to boil the peanuts I fed to my flock even though I had, by and large, already switched over to only buying human grade and health food peanuts to give to the birds. I noticed that most of my parrots preferred shelled and boiled peanuts to the dried or in-the-shell kind. It made sense as most Neo-tropical hookbills are raw, moist and soft fresh food eaters. This also significantly cut down on that granulated detritus, which was left over from my birds eating dried nut morsels.
For several years I could not understand why some of my parrots refused to eat the shelled almonds I would feed every week or so. These dark-skinned nuts were never touched in the feeding bowls and for a time I just stopped offering them to those breeder pairs. When possible I tried to substitute white-coloured skinless almonds, but found they were harder to acquire and more expensive. Doing some scientific research, I have since learned that the brown ‘seed coat’ covering the nutmeat on the inside of almond shells is a very tannin-rich substance, which in fact inhibits the full assimilation of some nutrients. Also this seed coat is difficult to digest as well, which is why some psittacines might prefer to eat bare white almonds. One opinion stated that the best way to eat an almond is soaked with skin removed. This flashed a light bulb on in my mind.