Tag: softbills

Posted on by

How can our pellets be used as a supplement?

Pellets

It’s a fact that some species of birds don’t like te eat pellets due to their feeding strategy. When this is the case, we need to use supplements to fulfill the gap of nutrients that the other foods present.

What if we could fulfill this gap with our pellets? I will give several examples:

wisbroek-micro-on-fish

Inca Sternen

Shore birds, are fantastic flyers and basic fish eaters. At Wisbroek R&D Center, when we present them the fish we sprinkle Wisbroek Micro 22 over the fish. It’s a high quality extruded pellet that, when it gets in contact with the fish, will absorb some water of his body and gets glued to the fish! So when the sterns eat the fish, the pellets are also eaten! What’s really amazing is what we saw with our Incas at Wisbroek R&D Center: after some time the birds started to eat the Micro 22 dry that we offered in an extra dish! Probably because of the coating with fish oil, the taste pleases them. They are in a mixed aviary with Chilean Flamingos and we often see them eat the Wisbroek Ibis – Flamingo Floating as well, probably because it is also coated with fish oil. How awesome is this? Now we just present fish and pellets to them and they look perfect and are breeding as well!

Fruit eaters

Here the case is different. These birds should have pellets in their daily diet. The composition of the fruit present on the market is not even close to the ones they eat in the wild. However it is also known how difficult it is for some birds to feed them pellets. At Wisbroek R&D Center we also had some cases like that. So we thought in the possibility to use our Wisbroek Softbill Diet Small as a supplement over the fruit. It worked perfectly! Because it’s also a high quality extruded pellet, absorbs some water of the fruit and gets glued to the fruit.

Well, fruit they like, so when some pellets are glued to the fruit, they have no chance rather than eat everything! Because the pellets also taste like fruit, eventually they start to eat them dry as well. We just need to keep presenting them to the birds!

whatsapp-image-2019-07-18-at-14.14.48
whatsapp-2019-07-18

Insectivores

Some insectivores like the Common Hoopoes or the Bee-eaters will for sure not eat pellets. But they love mealworms right? So what about just feeding the mealworms with the pellets? More information about this can be found in another blog, but to give an example this year we got a pair of Common Hoopoes with 9 babies. And they only eat the mealworms gut loaded with our Wisbroek Ibis-Flamingo Floating and Wisbroek Softbill Diet! Cool isn’t it?

(Blog: https://wisbroek.com/en/mealworm-nutrition-how-important-this-can-be-for-the-health-of-the-birds/

At the Wisbroek Research & Development Center, our most important task is keep researching the best ways to nourish a bird. Developing the highest quality feed is a precondition for success, but also brings a responsibility to research the best ways to feed those pellets. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, because sharing knowledge is for sure one of the keys to success for the worldwide aviculture.

Do you have questions about this blog or our feed? Do not hesitate to ask your question via our website www.wisbroek.com or send a mail to info@wisbroek.com.

Posted on by

Mealworm nutrition – How important this can be for the health of the birds

Mealworms

Mealworms are an excellent source of protein for your birds. Live mealworms are packed with protein and moisture and are an excellent bird food. However when we buy them it’s really difficult to know exactly what was feed to them before. And from one perspective yes, they are “bags” of protein, but these “bags” can also carry more undigested feeds that might be not good for our birds nutrition.

With this in mind, we at Wisbroek, as soon as we buy the live mealworms, put them on a diet for 5 days of 70% Wisbroek Softbill Diet 7.0 and 30% Wisbroek Ibis-Flamingo Floating pellets. Both soaked in water. And why soaked? Because if the mealworms don’t have the proper humidity they will start the metamorphose to the next stage and we don’t want that. Normally it’s given apples and carrots to provide the needed water, but if the pellets are soaked, there’s no need to do it. And because of the manufacturing of our pellets they will soak the water but stay in the original shape of a ball. Just a little bigger. It takes more than 2 days to turn into pap which give the mealworms enough time for eating all pellets.

wisbroek-home-2019-softbills

2 kinds of pellets

You might wonder why we mix these 2 kinds of pellets (Wisbroek Softbill Diet and Wisbroek Ibis-Flamingo Floating)? The Ibis-Flamingo pellets contain Canthaxanthin from the spirulina algae. So this will be a natural source of carotenes that will not be digested from the mealworms and will be carried by them as a vessel and eaten by the birds. That will give the birds small but enough quantities of carotenes that will enhance their colors! All the things that we don’t want to give to the Softbills like the fish oil present on the Flamingo food, the mealworms will digest! Then with 70% of Wisbroek Softbill Diet the mealworms will carry all the necessary nutrients that our bird needs.

It’s known how difficult it is to make an insectivore bird eating a pellet, but it’s also clear for us that our Wisbroek Softbill Diet is perfect for their nutrition! So feeding these pellets through the mealworms is how we provide the birds the necessary nutrients to thrive. And it works perfectly!

I strongly believe that nowadays even with the best feed (which we believe we have), it’s crucial to provide also advice in the nutritional husbandry. Because we can offer the perfect feed, but if the bird doesn’t eat it, that’s a problem. The Wisbroek team is continuously researching to find the best feeding techniques and we are always available to share this knowledge with all the bird technicians around the world!