UltraKibble

[zazouse]

Thanks for the added phone number bdfive.

 

[bandbaustin]

I was shocked, cause I went to the counter to order it and the kids says I think we carry it here. They had it and the cakes also. I am going to have them order the bigger bag for next time. At a mixture of 10 parts scratch to 1 part UK, I can feed all the birds here one time with a 2 lb bag. The 15 lb bag will be much more economical.

 

[Resolution]

Getting back to the issue of micro-nutrients. I'm about to start a thread dedicated to the nutrition of peafowl from an organic perspective, that is, taken from natural history as it relates to their captive diet.

The new thread is not about UltraKibble. I'll leave discussion of UltraKibble to this thread between people with actual experience with the product.

 

[bdfive]

Look forward to it Resolution. I want to know all I can about feeding my beautiful peafowl. I let my 75% green 2011 hatch juvenile chicks out today while I was working out near the pen. All 3 are such sweethearts and so friendly. I can't get over those long legs, LOL!!! They are so gorgeous.

 

[Resolution]

Today I'm picking up a 15 lb bag of UltraKibble at Tractor Supply to try out. I've read sometimes the birds don't care for it and wetting it helps. That's been the case for me with Mazuri. They love it wet, ignore it dry. Can those of you using it share your experience? What are you mixing it with? Thanks much.

The nice thing about soft pellets and crumbles is that birds generally devour them. They have the same taste and consistency as the first feeds that captive stock will have been fed as chicks.

Seeds and Grains are stimulating to eat because they not only taste good, they provide lots of energy which breaks down fairly quickly.

People will come to certain conclusions about whatever feed items are left in the feeder at the end of the day- the feedstuffs "pecked around".

For example, when we put wild bird seed out in the wild bird feeder, has anyone noticed what seeds are left to last?


When we put out scratch grain for our captive stock, has anyone noticed what cereals or grains are left to last?

It is generally most often the case that each bird has consumed a portion of each of the ingredients set out.

To understand why birds choose to eat smaller quantities of one food than another may have more to do with the nutritional quality of the food and how much energy it takes to digest/absorb nutrients within that food item. This is a matter of Optimal Foraging Theory.

Quote:
INTRODUCTION

Optimal Foraging Theory Link ONE

Optimal Foraging Theory Link for Science Nerds

Optimal Foraging Theory Link for FUN

Optimal Foraging Theory Link TWO

Optimal Foraging Theory Link THREE

Further Reading

In science speak: We suggest that foraging constructs may provide insight into the exploitation of non-food energy forms, and that non-food energy distributions may be more important in informing patterns of movement and residency over a range of scales than previously considered.

For instance, confined birds or even free-ranging captive birds that are fed daily, what do they do with the hours of their day and how does that impact what they eat and how much is necessary for consumption?

If a bird eats a small portion of a highly nutritious food item and one that takes a long while to move through the digestive system, the bird can actually rest and preen for more hours of the day.
The bird that consumes lots of low quality nutrition has to remain actively foraging the whole day and has less time to keep itself in pristine health. Because its foraging patch is very close to the feeder the diversity of food items it forages for is also reduced. This is not a bad thing. The example simply serves for comparison reasons.

The amount of energy required to do all those zany things like wing flapping, dusting, scratching, pecking remains the same but small portions of high quality of nutrition ensures that the birds are not burning themselves out by moult time.

In the feeder, at the wild bird dish or in the feed pan-, beneath a fruiting tree, in the dung heap at the dairy-individuals birds are exploiting a larder- that is this one site where all the most desired foods are concentrated in one place.

In nature, this might be in the insect rich decaying fruit beneath a messy tree. Wherever it is the birds must search out and find that larder while avoiding predators and competitors, stay hydrated and so on. That's a fair energy expenditure - actually a big one.

In free ranging birds it may well be in the insect rich manure of livestock. The birds are generally being fed every day so their foraging on the dung pile can be as energetic as all get out- calling and scuffling and courting all hours of the day. That just doesn't happen with wild birds.

Regardless of ecological parameters, the birds are foraging over a series of patches of ground. They take many food items. Some will be less nutritious than others. Some are higher in non-digestible fiber ( plant matter including the hulls of cereals and grass seeds like oats) whilst other materials like insect larvae are high in fat and with a wide range of amino acids. Another item the birds may pick up in a day would be items high in antioxidant activity, for example, the wind blown petals of certain slightly toxic flowers or a bit of algae or moss, bits of pitch off of pine bark. They will also pick up tiny drupes from time to time, which may seem inedible but are coated in resins high in fatty acids and high in natural anti-parasite properties. Larger species like wild turkeys will consume acorns in much the same manner. A crop full of acorns requires quite a lot of down time to break down and digest as the entire acorn is ingested. Peafowl do not eat acorns and are poorly equipped to digest this most important food of wild turkeys, monals and tragopans; fungi, the shoots of bamboo, the buds and catskins of certain trees, each of these food items is invaluable for one reason or another but the entire daily diet will not consist of just one in a given day. The bird needs to ingest a number of food items to meet its daily (dynamic) nutritional requirements.

This is not an all you can eat counter at a Chinese food joint in a strip mall. All food ingested upon by the fowl is not equal. Animals, in this particular instance, landfowl, are consuming a bit of this and a bit of that, completely dependent upon their age, life cycle, development and environmental conditions.

A mother peafowl foraging with her juvenile and subadult offspring, in the weeks prior to nesting may be selecting a slightly different gradient of food items than her subadult (2 year old) daughter who in turn may be selecting differently than her subadult brother. They are all foraging together in the same field and stream.The Juvenile ( born the previous year) are foraging for still another gradient of food, closer to that of the subadult male. Here's how.

Siamese imperator:
Subadult male trailing behind his mother or sister with her two juvenile sons. She's about to get to nesting when the subadult "helper" takes over the supervision of the juveniles while the father defends the nest site. The entire social unit is responsible for actively defending foraging territories.

Each bird has its own respective requirements. The soon to be mother needs to consume more nutrient rich items - a balance of them to pack her egg yolks. She is also going to be eating larger portions as she's got to not only produce a clutch, she's also got to incubate without moving from the nest for at least two weeks- plus get up and defend her chicks with her life once they've hatched. She's got to be in prime health before the first egg is laid. She's probably ingesting more green seeds and those slightly flower petals, more tiny anti-microbrial, anti-parasite drupes and as many insects and small animals as she can find.
The yearling and subadult daughter has the least energy requirements in that she hasn't got a major growth stage to shuttle through and her movements will not include the obligatory sparring with dad and uncle and neighboring dads and uncles, big brothers and male cousins like her subadult brother has to. For males, play fighting is a way of life and what is more, the older and more developed the subadult, the less tolerance his father and other territory holding, train bearing males will have for him.
What this means is, once his mother has gone to incubating he will have to forage over a much wider area in a given day, and participate in sentinel duties at the tops of trees when he isn't hunting.
That's lots of running, flying, sparring and hunting. The quality of the food enables him to rest hen through those protracted periods of downtime perching- giving out communicative signals that inform the larger social group about the news. All of the news-
The more effective the forager, the more effective at surviving predation, the better the sentinel and tougher the son, the more likely he will at some point in the future take up a satellite territory adjacent to his father and relatives- and eventually inherit his father's territory which likely was inherited as well.
That's another topic but one that speaks toward a different time of the year when foraging takes place in flocks- and when family cohesion takes a different form- closer proximity than that exhibited during nesting cycles. So the young male is hunting for larger food items, often small animals and he's avoiding materials that will weigh him down. He eats like a prize fighter. So do the juvenile males and the adult, train bearing males. Lean and mean.

The general rule is that these birds will eat a bit of many foods and just because they don't gorge on one food doesn't mean that they don't prefer it over other foods. They simply don't require much of it to gain the most value from it. Case in point, the frog. Peafowl of all species love frogs. While wading in shallow water, the birds forage on frog eggs, tadpoles, froglets and frogs. Why don't they just stand still in one shallow pond and eat as many frogs as possible? Why don't they just stand there all day? Instead they walk across the tropical savannah in heavy heat, panting all the way, stripping the tops of forbs and grasses before gorging on some small fruits in a shady patch and some fungi and a few beetles. One would assume that all their nutrients should come from those amphibians. The reality is, the birds require more energy than the amphibian contributes immediately- the bird needs to rest and digest that high protein package- it needs additional non digestible fibre (plant material) to help move the amphibian food stuffs through its digestive process. It needs fresh green seeds and fruit to increase sugar and energy for the short term.

When there is food left in the feeder, whatever that food is, the birds have eaten their daily requirement for that ingredient in their ration. In the case of UltraKibble, that's only a half teaspoon per day ( or exponentially more depending on those certain factors mentioned above). A half teaspoon of UltraKibble is the ~ equivalent of six tablespoons of typical soft pellet or crumble in nutritional value. This has to do with the manufacturing process, the temperatures ingredients are brought to break up starches and make everything more digestible. There a very wide range of amino acids and different forms of dietary fibres both soluble (crustacean meal) and non soluble ( dried vegetables). The product is designed to slow the rate of digestion by expanding within the crop of the bird- think grapenuts . You tend to not eat very large servings because it is so filling. Not so with cheerios , which like typical soft rations, disintegrate upon ingestion and are not filling. One could probably eat an entire box of cheerios in a single day. I doubt many would be so inclined to consume an entire box of grapenuts in a single day- depending in large part with what else is available in the house and the relative health of the individual gorging on cereal. I notice that even after a big bowl of grapenuts- donuts are still tasty and if I'm fooling myself into thinking I'm still in my 30's I could eat an entire box of krispy cremes without a care in the world plus a few peaches (yum).

If you feed UltraKibble and the birds appear to peck around it try not to jump to the conclusion that the birds don't like it. You're actually putting something into the birds that makes it so they don't have to eat nearly as much in the day. I always suggest that people take the time on a weekend to separately weigh out four or five dry ingredients including UltraKibble before mixing up and putting out as a daily ration. That night- weigh in what's left. Did the birds actually not eat any kibble or did they simply eat less of it than they ate the less nutritious 'fast food'? Once you've done this a few times you become more informed with actual figures and may learn something surprising about what you've been feeding and what is actually being consumed.

We can come to the conclusion that birds don't like proso millet because it is often left in the feed pan after everything else is cleaned up. Turns out- it's the most difficult to digest. The more that sits in the crop, the less room there is for anything else. It ferments before it moves through and this is why millet is ideal for winters- it helps keep birds warm.
It's not that they don't like proso millet, they just know when they've had enough bulky hard grain in a day.
Oats are often left in the feeder for similar reasons.

If there is food left in the feeder don't feed again until they have cleaned up everything. This is how nature intends - birds should run on empty more often than full. That's the nature of birds, save for those that you are butchering or expecting to lay en egg every day for one year. These feeds are of marginal value when compared with UK.

It works best on birds with clean systems -less food in the digestive tract is beneficial. Slowing down the rate of digestion enables fowl to better utilise nutrients they would otherwise be pooping out.

That's difficult to wrap the brain around because this is a whole new paradigm in animal husbandry. Traditional soft rations are consumed so rapidly you're obliged to replace those bags often. That's the genius of their business model. Eat cheerios- lots of them- they're super cheap and super tasty. Your highschooler is going to polish off half a box after school as a snack. Someone is going to have to gas up the car and buy more cheerios. We just keep doing it out of habit never really thinking about how useless they really are and how much money we end up spending on air.

 

[Doctor T]

Awesome! Thanks Resolution!

 

[bandbaustin]

Resolution,

What ratio of ultra kibble to scratch would one use for birds that are not free ranged? My local tractor supply is looking into getting it in the 15 pound bag for me. I also emailed Menards, who carries C & S suet cakes. They said they could order the ultra kibble 15 pund bag for me and have it delivered to my local store for 34.99 a bag.

 

[Resolution]

Resolution,

What ratio of ultra kibble to scratch would one use for birds that are not free ranged? My local tractor supply is looking into getting it in the 15 pound bag for me. I also emailed Menards, who carries C & S suet cakes. They said they could order the ultra kibble 15 pund bag for me and have it delivered to my local store for 34.99 a bag.

2 parts kibble to 10 parts scratch grain - don't bother with a scratch grain made with peas or soybeans - all the nutrients needed are in the kibble- the scratch grain is just for satiation.
My favorite scratch mixture will include proso millet, oats, cracked corn and wheat.
Don't forget to put out a fresh bowl of grit stirred into oystershell once every month. Dump what hasn't been consumed in a foraging container- like a livestock water container. The foraging container is where any and all kitchen scraps or fruit are fed to prevent bacterial infection.
When the birds are going into nesting cycle, before the first egg is deposited in the nest- put out a custard made of soaked kibble mixed into a low sugar canned fruit -applesauce or pears, plums- what ever they have handy. Put this out twice a month throughout the nesting season and provide to new chicks once every few weeks.

 

[bdfive]

Bandbaustin, please note: I'm getting the 15 lb bag of UltraKibble at Tractor Supply for $24.99.

Lots of reading to do to catch up on this thread. Been busy. Latest is underground electric and water going to the aviary with lots of work involved. Also having fun trying to get a 2011 hatch 75% Green peahen back in the pen. Yesterday morning she flew off with the greatest of ease. Came home but couldn't get her on this side of the fence. A feral cat spooked her...she's now high up in a Live Oak tree so this mornings chore is getting her to fly down here. She eats from my hand so hopefully will have her contained soon. MY GOODNESS, these Greens can fly!!!!!

 

[Resolution]

Bandbaustin, please note: I'm getting the 15 lb bag of UltraKibble at Tractor Supply for $24.99.

Lots of reading to do to catch up on this thread. Been busy. Latest is underground electric and water going to the aviary with lots of work involved. Also having fun trying to get a 2011 hatch 75% Green peahen back in the pen. Yesterday morning she flew off with the greatest of ease. Came home but couldn't get her on this side of the fence. A feral cat spooked her...she's now high up in a Live Oak tree so this mornings chore is getting her to fly down here. She eats from my hand so hopefully will have her contained soon. MY GOODNESS, these Greens can fly!!!!!

Leave her- she's fine. There's no fixed rule that they won't stick around. Just try not to spook her.