Zupreem Nut Blend

So i bought a bag (17 1/2 lb) of the new zupreem nut blend.Every body seems to love it except Stacie,hard to make everyone happy. Only 4% crude fat which is good for the non-breeder zons, still made mostly from corn but no gluten.Smells really good when you open the bag , Some pieces are kind of large which may lead to more waste but i'll give it a try. Cost about the same as most of the other pellets (about 2.25 per lb ) Does taste better than the other stuff but seems to be sweet, maybe too sweet. Jake hasn't stopped crunching away. Think i'll just give it as a "rainy day" treat.

Don't know if we tried that one yet, will have to look in our stock.

Sounds yummy!

I feed it as part of Scotty's pellet mix.

FWIW a recent study from UC Davis which was reported on in Bird Talk demonstrated that the group of Amazons studied did better with larger pellets. It "normalized the activity budget" and functioned more like foraging. I find that Scotty seems to like larger food pieces as well, while Scooter rarely uses his feet to eat and seems to prefer tiny food.

Did YOU taste it?

I find Husband eating the fids pellets with them all the time.

Seriously.

I haven't fed Zupreem yet, but if it tastes as good as it smells, I'd be sure to love it! I smelled their fruit blend the other day (I'm pretty sure it was theirs) and it reminded me of some of the candies my kids buy. And oh yeah, I actually DO taste all of my fids food, much the same way I tasted all of my kids food and meds before I'd give it to them. The only place I draw the line is at dog food and at the organic pellets. They smell WAY too much like what I used to feed livestock. And while some of the grain mixes I'd give my horse smelled REALLY good sometimes, I was never tempted to dip my head in the feed trough with them!

I actually used to pick the corn out of the textured feeds and eat it! I have not, however, sampled the pellets, although the only cold cereal I'm fond of is Mueseli. To me the NutBlend pellets smell like the Hazelnut flavoring in hazelnut coffee. Scotty eats them, but he certainly does not see them as anywhere near as deisrable as an actual almond or pistachio.

Has anyone seen/smelled the new VeggieBlend pellets? They came out at the same time as the NutBlend.

Some people get down on ZuPreem because of the use of colorants and refined sweetners, but that doesn't particularly bother me as long as the overall sugar content of the food is not out of spec for a balanced diet.

They have the VeggieBlend at the feed store but i haven't tried it yet. Yes i did try the NutBlend, but it is sweeter than other pellets i have tried. Sugar is the 5th ingredient but i don't know what % or how much is too much, I would assume wild parrots eat lots of sugar in fruit and flowers but what's normal? Or better yet ,what's bad ?

Well being 5th on the list of ingredients tells you rather little about how much sugar is really in it. The first 4 ingredients could represent as much as 99.9% of the recipe. The sixth ingredient is vegetable oil and the fourth Wheat germ meal, both of which I would assume are relatively small fractions of the total, although not trace amounts.

The guaranteed analysis for bird food does not seem to include any info about carbohydrates, and this product is 14% protien, 4% fat, 4% crude fiber and 10% moisture. by comparison Roudybush pellets are 11% protein, 6% fat, 3.5% crude fiber and 12% moisture. (the protien and fat are minima, fiber and moisture maxima).

Here's what Zupreem says about sugar content on its website: "Sucrose is added to ZuPreem FruitBlend Flavor, Natural, AvianBreeder FruitBlend, AvianBreeder Natural and AvianWeaning Diet in very small amounts. Sucrose mimics the simple sugars found in fruits that most birds eat and enjoy in the wild. All sugars such as sucrose, fructose or lactose, are carbohydrates and contain four calories per gram. After digestion, sugars travel through the bloodstream to body cells where they are used for energy to help metabolize fat, help form proteins, or to be stored for future use." Not a lot of content there, as very small is not quantified, but...

I'd rather feed very natural pellets, and offer real chunks of fruit and nuts. But then, I hand prepare the majority of my food..

Hey Onion, wish i could afford to feed Harrisons but it cost 3/4 times as much. We spend hours a day chopping,sprouting and gathering fresh fruit and veggies for our flock. The people at the local produce stands all known we have birds and look out for us. As well as keeping a lookout for growing things around our area that the birds can eat,nuts,seed pods,fruit etc.

Same here HP. The area around the new rescue is all farmland and there are lots of roadside markets and farm markets. We got here just at the end of the season, but we seem to get bushels of local apples and such dropped at our door quite often.

Talk about "small town", a story I forgot to share with all of you. Probably about a week after that newspaper story was posted I was up in the rescue by myself and this strange car pulled up and this woman came in asking if we had any cockatiels. Needless to say,I was a bit startled. There were no appointments for the day, the article hadn't listed an address for us and we're way back off the road so its not something you could just "figure out" on your own.

I asked her how she found us and she said (no lie) "I'm not from around here at all, so I found Blairstown on the map and just drove up. I stopped in town for gas and asked the attendant where you were and he gave me direction." !! Turns out that we had become quite the talk of the town and everyone knew who were were. The next day, Jeanne had gone into town for groceries and a group of older women recognized her from her picture in the article and chatted with her for an hour, LOL