HARRISON'S ORGANIC PELLETS?

[fallenweeble]

does anyone know if it is a good or a bad idea to feed harrison's pellets to chickens? i feed them to my parrots and they love 'em. i know that hard and soft bill birds are very different so i'm wondering about the safety/nutrional effectiveness of feeding "parrot" pellets to chickens.
thoughts?
ideas?
comments?
thanks!
f. weeble

 

[WoodlandWoman]

My first thought is, "Wow! How expensive would that be???"

I feed Harrison's to my parrot, also. I just ordered a fresh bag, that's why I was joking about the price. I feed a lot of other things, too, like a wide variety of fresh fruits & veggies, sprouts, cooked mixes with beans, birdy bread, lean meat, seeds, nuts, palm oil and whatever else I'm forgetting here. Shhh, don't tell anyone, but his favorite junk food is a bit of Avi-cake. I like to keep a bowl of pellets available all the time, though.

There's a pretty wide range in the Harrison diets. There wouldn't be nearly enough calcium in the Harrison's for a layer. There's more fat in the Harrison's, too. The protein is too low in many of them, like only 14% and the ones with a higher protein have 20% protein and a lot more fat in them, like 15% fat. A typical layer food has 16% protein and 2.5% fat, just as an example.

I'm sure you could pick the most suitable formula and add other things to it, to get a balanced diet. I think it would be a lot easier to find a good organic layer feed and just use that, though.

What kind of parrots do you have? I am down to just my African Grey, Kirby. He is still a handful!

 

[fallenweeble]

hey ww,
see, this was EXACTLY the analysis i needed!
thank you.
i wouldn't feed them harrison's as a base diet, more as a suppliment/snack sort of thing.
do you think it would be okay to offer in smallish amouts with other snack foods?

i have all sorts of parrots -
1 goffin's
2 cherry head conures
1 eclectus
2 golden conures.

they too get all sorts of foods. in the morning they get organic birdie bread plus fresh veggies, cereal etc.
at night they get "cockatoo stew" which is a mix i make with pasta, grains, veggies, etc. in a big pot and then freeze it so i can microwave a portion each day for them.
i give nutriberries as treats (like avicakes!) and they have the harrison's available at all times.
my goffin's actually prefers the harrison's to "real" food (go figure).

and, just curious ww, what brand of pellets do you offer your chickens? actually, if you can give me a short lesson in what kind of stuff you offer your chickens that would be pretty swell. you seem really in the know! and what do you think about roos eating "layer" pellets?
i know plenty about parrot nutrition but i'm new to chickens so i could you all the help i can get!
thanks for your response - it was GREAT!
f. weeble