Dear Parrots magazine,
Quality Control for nuts
First, I want to say how much I appreciate the articles in Parrots magazine. In my area, we used to have a parrot club, an annual parrot festival and a veterinarian who specialised in exotic animals. Those have all gone, making this reading resource even more important.
In the February issue, “Quality Control for Whole Nuts”, Eb Cravens discusses the quality control of macadamia nuts. We brought some macadamia nuts back from Australia for our macaw. The shells of this round nut are very hard. Our parrot managed to eat the macadamia nut by drilling a hole in the shell with her beak and turning the shell with her foot. We thought that was pretty clever.
We feed out parrots pistachios, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, and peanuts, in the shell. Those are the most common nuts around here, in southern Ontario. Eb Cravens says that “We Seldom Let our Birds Crack Nuts”. We, as much as possible, let our birds crack nuts. I’m not sure where these grade B nuts come from, but the nuts we purchase are also the nuts we eat. Even though there is more mess for us to clean up, by supplying the nut in the shell to birds, they are given a bit more foraging pleasure.
Aflatoxen has been an issue with peanuts in the shell. Again, I don’t understand where these damaged nuts come from. Like many others, we buy our nuts from the grocery stores. The peanut shell has never been a problem for us or our birds, and our birds love them. They certainly aren’t a main course, but they are used as treats and for training. Every night our macaw gets a walnut before going into her cage and looks forward to the occasion.
In the article “Preventing and ‘Curing’ self-plucking in companion parrots”, February issue, the author suggests giving parrots boxes to hide in to increase their sense of security. I’m pretty sure that if we gave our parrots a box, they would chew it into small pieces. I am concerned about giving boxes to parrots as that could increase their desire to nest. Perhaps one might reconsider giving boxes to parrot.
Caroline Feur, by email