THE VALUE OF GREEN FOOD

An article from Agapornis News, the Newsletter of: The African Lovebird and Foreign Parrot Society of Qld Inc.

This is an important part of the diet of seed-eating birds. It provides them with the essential salts and vitamins not otherwise available in dry seed. It corresponds to a fresh green salad in our own diet. The great fault with nutrition lies with the seed diet and not in the greenfood, unless we mean the absence of greenfood rather that its presence. It is quite definitely the seed portion of the bird's diet that is deficient, and greenfood plays the vital part of making good all its deficiencies.

Greenfood contains everything needed for life. Herbivorous animals live entirely on greenfood, but the modern domesticated animal thrives best on a mixture of grain and greenfoods, and into this category comes birds. The basic cause of digestive upsets is generally lack of greenfood rather than too much, except where the greens are not in proper condition for breeding purposes. Greenfood is, of course, only good when freshly picked. If offered to birds in a wilted or withered condition, it may well cause serious disturbances.

Sound greens make the deficiencies of seed which lack calcium, iron, iodine, manganese, certain essential amino acids and vitamins, to say nothing of several trace minerals, like copper, cobalt, zinc and others. Some trace minerals may be almost absent in greenfoods or soil deficient in them, but certain plants have a knack of extracting more trace minerals from a poor soil than others. For this reason, it is advisable not to stick to just one kind of greenfood, but to provide a variety. What is lacking in one plant is likely to be available in another.

As most of our birds husk their seed, they miss its essential fibre or roughage, which is concentrated in the husks. Roughage is as essential for a cage bird as it is for a cow. Farmers know that the basic food of a cow is what they term as "roughage", that is, hay of some kind. Cage birds also need something of the sort.

The fact that birds will eat paper inside their cages, shows they are suffering from a lack of roughage. Paper is made from vegetable fibre and birds eat it only for its fibre. Naturally, it is a harmful type of fibre due to its adulteration during manufacture.

The fibre in greens is essential for proper digestion in birds living on shelled seeds, because the digestive bacteria produce vitamins and their own proper environment from the fibre, thus fibre improves digestion, and not the reverse, as so many mistakenly believe.

The value of greenfood for breeding birds is seen from the fact that canaries whose parents get as much green as they can eat, with only small amounts of egg-food, will grow out their feathers much faster and better than those whose parents get more egg-food, but only small amounts of greens.

True, the latter group will develop better in size of body, but their feathering will lag behind that of the first group. It is not intended to try to argue that the first group received the ideal diet. In fact, neither represents the ideal, but that the best method lies mid-way between the two. The feeding parents should get liberal amounts of egg-food and greenfood all day long, so that they can choose for themselves from hour to hour. These little parents feel their responsibilities keenly, and they know better than we, whether their young need greenfood at any given time of the day, or egg-food, or a mixture of both. They will also see about the mixing themselves as required.

Naturally, these remarks apply only to good rearing parents. Poor feeders have lost the art of mixing the various foods to the best advantage, and the chicks then suffer.

From the above, it will be seen that greenfood must be given often during the day in such amounts that it will be finished up before it deteriorates. The time it takes to wilt depends upon many factors. Some green plants 'go off' sooner than others under equal conditions of sun or weather.

Water delays wilting. If a plant is removed from the ground with roots intact, it may be placed into the cage in a vessel of water. This prevents wilting.

Fruit and vegetables, including tomatoes, are not nearly as good as greenfood, either in the quality and quantity of their chemical constituents or their vitamins. There are, however, times when wild berries are able to supplement copper, manganese, cobalt, and others. Generally a wild plant contains more trace elements than a cultivated one.

Greenfood is the best medicinal and tonic food we can give birds. It is better than any artificial medicine or tonic, because the green plant contains everything properly blended by nature. It make good all deficiencies in seed diets.

If birds do not get a regular supply of greenfood and suddenly they are given a large quantity, there is little doubt that they will develop some trouble. On the other hand, if they receive a regular supply, no ill effects will be caused if a large quantity is given when the supply is plentiful.

It is always advisable to wash greenfood in a bucket of water or under the running tap, in case it has been contaminated by cats, dogs, or other sources.

The best greenfood is that which is growing in full sunlight. Dark green leaves are preferable to pale or light green leaves.

In America, a study of buds and shoots of certain trees in spring, has shown an increase in B vitamins during the growth of buds and shoots. This probably explains the great fondness wild birds show for young buds and shoots.

Carotene, pro-vitamin A, also occurs in young shoots and buds, in fact, in anything that turns green, red or yellow among natural foods. Yellow foods like carrot, nasturtium flowers, not only valuable for dying the plumage yellow or reddish, also enrich the blood with vitamin A.

In the wild, birds consume a large amount of berries in the autumn. This helps them considerably during the moult. Other greenfoods which assist during the moult, as well as acting as a tonic are plantains, knotgrass, shepherd's purse, chickweed, docks and dandelion. A general list of some plants suitable to use as greenfood - sorghums, stinging nettles, crowsfoot, cocksfoot, summer couch, annual meadow grass, ryegrass, knotgrass, greater and ribworth plantains, milk thistle, groundsel, lettuce and cabbage leaves, watercress, prairie grass, silverbeet and spinach, and there are many others.

Of the flower seeds, calendulas, marigolds, and nasturtiums are good. Blackberry, privet, hawthorn, rowan and elderberry are ideal berries.

Young lettuce and cabbage leaves contain all vitamins; lettuce is especially rich in vitamin E. Little is known about vitamin E, except that a deficiency of this vitamin can lead to infertility.

A few plants are supposed to be poisonous, but usually the bird's instinct will warn it. It is only when the bird has been starved of greenfood and a supply is given with a poisonous piece included, that there is any chance of trouble.