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.
Caroline Fehr, by email