Okay, so, I took all of my budgies in today to my local vet, which happens to have a bird specialist. She confirmed the scaly face mites problem, and gave them a shot in the muscle to the right of the chest bone, the shot was ?Ivermectin? I'm not sure if I spelled it right, but, it was .001%.

 

Anyways, I informed her of the seed-based diet, a long with all kinds of daily fruits, vegetables, and an occasional hard-boiled egg, and she told me that the seeds are very fatty and should only be used as a treat.. She then went on to tell me about a "Budgie-specific Pellet diet" That the budgies should be on as their normal food..

 

I've read so many things about pellets vs seeds.. I thought that using only one of them is bad? Why would she recommend to switch to a pellet diet?

Edited April 21, 201015 yr by KAZ

This is common advice from all vets these days. In my own personal opinion its a knee jerk reaction they have to the amount of sick birds they see. Mostly sick birds on seed only diets with no extras. They faily to recognise much of the time that there are budgie owners out there that DO feed a wider more varied diet including all the vegies and natural branches etc.

I think a wider varied diet is far superior to a man made pellet diet, and one should never give upon seeds totally and use a 100% pellet diet.

My opinion only.

vets over here recommend it too Sean... If you are feeding your birds a varied diet you've got nothing to worry about. You'll spend way more on pellets then you will a varied diet, and that will be about the only difference.

Hi Sean,

Reading your post, it was probably rather costly to have all your birds treated. Here you can get Ivermectin from a vet. bird strength. You then treat your birds 1 drop behind head, each 3 months. This takes care of a lot of worms, mites etc. and a 50ml. bottle was under $20.00 that will do heaps of birds. Might be food for thought for the future.