Home | Bird diet | Goldenfeast Sweet Potatoes Bird Treat – Product Review

Goldenfeast Sweet Potatoes Bird Treat – Product Review

Posted by: Frank Indiviglio in Bird diet, Bird Product Review January 7, 2009 5 Comments 3226 Views

While looking over some information on Goldenfeast’s Sweet Potatoes Bird Treat it occurred to me just how often I have used these tasty vegetables during my life as a private and professional animal keeper. I would hazard a guess that, with the possible exception of bananas, yams and sweet potatoes have figure in the captive diets of a greater variety of animals than any other food item. Animals ranging from African dwarf mice to African elephants, golden pheasants to ostriches, millipedes to land crabs and iguanas to Galapagos tortoises consume them avidly (at an aquarium in Japan, I was astonished to see Australian lungfish gobbling them up as well!).

It turns out that sweet potatoes are an ideal food item – high in fiber and packed with valuable nutrients. Goldenfeast’s dehydrated sweet potatoes offer a convenient method of providing your birds with their benefits. Although marketed for parrots, I suggest you offer small bits to your finches and softbills as well. If you keep shama thrushes, mynas, Pekin robins or similar birds, you might try soaking the potatoes in water for a few minutes to re-hydrate them.

Resources dealing with the nutrient content of sweet potatoes are listed at:

http://sweetpotatousa.org/nutrition1.htm

5 comments

Lynn Beale
March 2, 2009 at 10:05 pm

Hello, My lovebirds(peachface) take many different foods besides seeds, including these sweet potatos, but won’t touch pellets. They seem ok on seeds, but I would like to have pellets make up some part of their diet. I have tried mixing in with seeds, cutting amount of seeds and sticking the pellets into fruit. I’m using Pet Place fruit blend for cockateils pellets. Thanks.
findiviglio
March 3, 2009 at 12:42 pm

Hello, Frank Indiviglio here. Thanks for your interest in our blog.

It’s a good idea to add pellets to your lovebirds’ diets; thanks for choosing our fruit blend product. You might try starting the birds off with foods that incorporate pellets along with other foods in a single unit – Lafeber Avicakes and Nutriberriesare well accepted by many birds. Higgins Egg Food is another favorite, although not all lovebirds take to it. If yours do, try using it to disguise the pellets a bit.

Sticking the pellets into fruit is a great idea but, as you’ve no doubt observed, parrots are very good at extracting what they want and discarding the rest. One trick (which works on all kinds of animals) is to roll the pellets around in strawberry, raspberry or other fruit jelly (use “Spreadable Fruit” or similar brands, which contain fruit only) – the birds will not be able to remove the jelly coating easily, and may eat the pellets. Peanut butter works in some situations, but would be tedious to use with lovebirds and likely not as effective as fruit jelly.

Please check out my article on pellet-based bird diets and keep me posted when you have a moment.

Good luck and best regards, Frankm Indiviglio
michael skeans
July 1, 2010 at 5:24 pm

michael Skeans Scottsdale Az .. just wanted to share this. because of the intense heat this summer , I had to move my birds .By using a solar power supply to my 12volt fan they are now getting the extra air that they need to stay cool. If that didn;t work ,I was going to put dry ice in front of the fan..
findiviglio
July 1, 2010 at 10:20 pm

Hello Michael,

Thanks for the tips…I’ve heard from friends in Arizona who are finding it too hot even for their Horned Toads and other desert-adapted lizards!

Good luck and please keep me posted.

Best regards, Frank Indiviglio.

Pingback: Goldenfeast Bird Food

About Frank Indiviglio

Read other posts by Frank Indiviglio

I believe that I was born with an intense interest in animals, as neither I nor any of my family can recall a time when I was not fascinated by creatures large and small. One might imagine this to be an unfortunate set of circumstances for a person born and raised in the Bronx, but, in actuality, quite the opposite was true. Most importantly, my family encouraged both my interest and the extensive menagerie that sprung from it. My mother and grandmother somehow found ways to cope with the skunks, flying squirrels, octopus, caimans and countless other odd creatures that routinely arrived un-announced at our front door. Assisting in hand-feeding hatchling praying mantises and in eradicating hoards of mosquitoes (I once thought I had discovered “fresh-water brine shrimp” and stocked my tanks with thousands of mosquito larvae!) became second nature to them. My mother went on to become a serious naturalist, and has helped thousands learn about wildlife in her 16 years as a volunteer at the Bronx Zoo. My grandfather actively conspired in my zoo-buildings efforts, regularly appearing with chipmunks, boa constrictors, turtles rescued from the Fulton Fish Market and, especially, unusual marine creatures. It was his passion for seahorses that led me to write a book about them years later. Thank you very much, for a complete biography of my experience click here.