A Home Made Hand Raising Mix

[Jacksprat]

Has anyone made their own HR mix for tiels before???

I've just experimented with my current babies and they love it. I do my own lori mix so I thought I'd give it a go for the tiels. I work in health food shop with all the ingredients I need.

I used
500g millet meal
500g ground rice
500g fine semolina
1 pkt baby cereal
1/4cup milk pdr

If there's something crucial missing, please let me know. I'm thinking of adding freshly ground flaxseeds for the omega oils too.

I added glucose and raw sugar for the lori's wet mix and she licked the bowl clean in no time - for the first time. The only difference was the millet.

[lovemytiels]

Hi Jacqui, if you are adding the milk powder for calcium then I would be more inclined to find another source of calcium as most birds don't tolerate milk too well as they don't have the necessary enzyme to digest lactose. Almond meal is very high in calcium. Flax meal is good for the necessary omega oils but I have found that the fine fibers clog up syringes very quickly making it near on impossible to feed. When making your own h/rear mix try to replicate as close as possible what is in the bought brands as there are some very necessary vitamins & minerals that is essential for growing bubs & then take it from there. I have been talking to a few friends of mine & they are very unhappy with some of the bought brands of h/rearing mix due to losing quite a few birds maybe from contaminated mix, who knows. Cheers Anna

[beachbird]

Wow Anna, that's an interesting comment about possible contaminated h/r mix. I was using a fairly popular brand, which shall remain nameless, and I lost two babies on it. My friend lost three.
So I've gone back to one I have used all other times, with no losses of hatched babies, even ones which had to be pulled at 14 days, due to stressed parents.

[Jacksprat]

I appreciate your advice Anna.
I use a spoon so the flaxseed won't be a problem. The milk pdr was more for consistancy and it wasn't much anyway, like 1:10. I'll leave it out next batch. I forgot to say I added brewers yeast pdr for the vitamin supp. I'll get some barley grass pdr or spirulina too. The main reason I did it was I got caught short and I had most of the ingredients for the lori's. They are starting to wean so I didn't mind experimenting on them being a bit older.

[lovemytiels]

Hi Jacqui, nothing wrong with you making your own h/rear mix as I have been using my own for many years now as I was very unhappy with numerous well known brands and was losing a lot of baby's. This is my own choice to make my own but I made sure that I did my research and included everything a growing baby needed. Brewers yeast is a great idea as it contains the essential B group Vitamins as well as other goodies. Instead of just flaxmeal why don't you try LSA (Linseed Almond & Sunflower meal). You should be able to buy this at your health food shop.This will provide not only essential omega 3 & omega 6 but also provides a good source of other essential vitamin & minerals essential for growing bubs as well as the necessary fat content that is needed for them. While most people would not agree on people using a homemade h/rear mix, just remember this it is our choice and there are many reasons why we choose to do so like being caught short or just plain unhappy with commercially bought ones. All the best Jacqui of your recipe. Cheers Anna

[AussieBirds]

I have been researching making my own hand raising mix for about 6 months now as I too am not happy with the commercial brands I am slowly working up a recipe, It's not something you just go head long into and I am attempting to find out as much as I can before i settle on a recipe.

John

[kim1]

Ive, tried a couple of homemade mixes this year, but am haveing success with the latest, I use, 1 pkt of high protein baby ceriel, 1/2 cup groung oatmeal, 1/2 cup almond meal, 1/4 cup of LSA, 1/4 cup weatgerm, 1tsp spiralina, 1/4 tsp brewers yeast, and a pinch of calcium carbonate, I bung the lot back through the blender or as Anna says it can get caught in the syringe, I also use a sharp pointed knife to twist gently in the tip of the syring to widen it a little, Anna has great advice and my mixture has been a lot of experimenting and quite a few tips from Anna . Seems to work well and Ive got some nice healthy plump chicks this time that are weaning without getting to skinny, but I'd appreciate any advice if there is anything wrong with this mix. Kim

[ozquaker]

OK ... I'm getting a little concerned now reading about commercial brands not coming up to scratch. Can someone explain to me what the problems are? I'm using Roudybush and haven't had problems before, but I am really curious to know and would appreciate further info.

Cheers,

Giovanni

[Jacksprat]

Kim, that sounds like a good recipe, I'll give it a go or at least modify mine. I already eat LSA everday myself, even make it up fresh every few days so there is no oxidisation of the oils.
I like the idea of my own formula for the freshness factor and the reduced cost as well.

Hey John- make sure you let us know when you settle on a recipe.

Jacqui

[AussieBirds]

Hello Giovanni, I guess the reason I am trying my own version is trying to invent the better mouse trap. I have heard the story's of other people having problems with commercial brands, and indeed I have lost babies but i couldn't say they were attributed to the mix i was feeding other than one experience i did have.

I had a mother abandoned her babies at around 4 weeks, for a reason I am not sure of, I pulled the babies and started feeding them Passwells hand raising mix for a period of time everything went well then one by one sour crop stated to occur. I flushed the crop and added the usual thing to the mix to help them digest the food but one by one the little ones died. I explained my problem to Anna and she suggested I use a baby food rice mix as a basis of the mix along with some apple sauce and behold the remaining babies thrived and have indeed recovered to the point where they have all gone to new homes and are fit and well.

Now I am not saying that the hand raising mix was the cause of the problem BUT it did turn around once i started to use the mix recommended to me by Anna so this started me thinking can I invent a better mouse trap? who knows ? but i am going to find out.

John

[kim1]

I keep that mixture in the fridge to stop any deteriation of the oils etc, also stops the wheatgerm going off, it can be frozen also, I found a lot of commercial brands contain potenta (corn meal) as one of the ingredients, it has been my experience that younger chicks find this hard to digest and this results in sour crop, older chicks seem ok with it though. Also some brands have high levels of various types of sugars, such as sucrose and glucose, I'm suspecting to much can promote candida growth in some chicks. That said there are some excellent mixes on the market and roudy bush is one of them (though it does stink bad) but I'm in an area where I had to order my handraiseing mix through mail order so after haveing some problems last year with sour crop I decided to experiment a bit this year.

[ozquaker]

Thanks John. I'm actually all for home made receipes that provide a natural healthy diet to our young birds. After all, when the chicks are fed by the parents, they don't get handraising mix, but get the very foods that we put into the aviaries/cages - which would mostly be sprouts, dry seed, fruit, veg and any supplements - and this appears to be the basis of many home made mixes. I've seen some good receipes on the net, but for the life of me can't seem to find the links now.

All this has reminded me of the very first bird that I handraised. It was a softbill which I found on the footpath on the way home from school back when I was a very young 13. The chick couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 days old - still blind and totally naked. I didn't know much about hand feeding birds then, so I just used chook pellets (for adult egg laying chooks!) - softened it to a paste in water and spoon fed the baby. The food was at room temperature and the brooder was a shoe box with tissue paper. It grew up to be a very healthy bird no different in size to its wild counterparts. It was never caged and I used to spend many hours in my parents fruit tree with it. I was probably lucky that all went well with it.

My point? None other than sometimes we probably put too much faith into 'special formulas' that are specifically formulated to provide every nutrient.

[lovemytiels]

I think you have hit the nail on the head Giovanni. I have tried to mimic what foods I feed the parents & base a h/rear mix on that. I had the very same problem as John years back, I would lose many birds to sour crop and tried many different brands apart from roudybush as it wasn't available here at the time and I know it wasn't something I was doing wrong as I am always very careful with temperture of food & how much to feed. It is very rare for me to lose any birds now and during the breeding season I can h/raise up to 60 birds or more without any deaths. With homemade h/rear mix at least you know it is fresh and hasn't been sitting on the shelf for yonks. My recipe is very similar to Kim's and we have talked about what ingredients should be added for optimal health and what should be left out. The only thing I might add to my mix is a pro biotic if I am h/rearing from day one which sometimes can happen but if I pull the chicks at 18 days then a pro biotic is not really needed as they have the natural anti bodies from their parents by this time. Home made mixes don't need to be fancy with ingredients but all vitamins & essential minerals must be included to meet the growing needs of the bubs. It is great that this discussion has taken place and we can freely admit that some of us do make our own h/rearing mix without being condemned for doing so as most people go into horrors if you admit you use a homemade mix & tell you you are not being a responsible person so I have got to the stage where I keep my mouth shut. I know I am a very responsible person and the health of my birds & babies that I am h/rearing is of the utmost importance to me. Cheers Anna

[spideysmum]

when i brought my new bird the breeder gave me this recipe and my birds love it...my girlfriend also tried it with her lovebirds and they loved also..she is using it to hand feed her babies and they have to share it with the kitten.. ;D

Farex 2000g
skimmed milk powder 600g
dextrose 700g
raw sugar 1700g
vanilla sustagen 400g
dark malt 400g
multi vitamin for birds 10 teaspoons

[ollie]

I've been making homemade Lori mix for a while now and it works well, I think if you get the right formula why not. Works out much cheaper too and it's fresh and you can control how it's stored. I store mine in the freezer and just take it out in small quantities.

[kim1]

I think they would love it as it has lots of sugar in it, I seem to get a bit of trouble with candida if there is too much sugar in a mix, no matter how carefull I am about sterilizeing my equipment. As Anna says there can be a lot of flack about makeing your own mix, I can only say the results with the right mix speaks for itself. I used a very popular brand of comercial mix the first two seasons I handreared babies with good results, and resonable weight gains, but had a little trouble with slow crop, but this time useing a home made mix I've got huge chicks that are very robust and healthy and easy to wean, previously they always lost a lot of weight at weaning time but this time the seem to stabilize at a very good weight. I guess whatever you find works for your chicks is the best mix to use, weither commercial or homemade.

[Jacksprat]

Hey spideysmum,
Is that for loris or tiels? Looks too sweet for tiels- I'd give that to my loris

[bellasbirds]

Powdered Milk doesn't hurt the birds at all