Aussie Finch Forum

Anyone else having trouble with the quality of commercial seed.
My birds would not eat about half of the supplied seed. I won't name the supplier although I should. The birds reject all of the filler they place in the bag like corn, Sunflower Seed and Corn. (For finches????) I also believe that a lot of imported seed is too hard for our finches to crack, hense more waste. As an experiment I used a coffee grinder and ground the seed down. The birds loved it.

Yes I posted about this not long ago , since then I have found and tried a couple of brands and am going to buy a locally packed one on Monday ... the way Im thinking though after a few trials is THESE BIRDS ARE BLOODY SPOILT so to test this theory the conures and other smaller parrots have had the hoppers taken away and are given seed in a large tray , instead of changing the seed each day I give it a turnover with my hand and blow off any husks then give them back the tray and guess what the little buggers are eating the seed they normally discard .
Read about this on a parrot forum and seems that they pig out on the sunflower first then eat the next favourite etc till there is no seed left ...Does it harm the bird NO the nutrients in the sunflower stay in the body long enough to get them through to their next sunflower hit .
Just 1 theory however you are correct I have bought some shocking bags of seed lately , full of dust and spent husks , maybe the end of last seasons pickings.

I thought everyone knew bird are like kids. Hmm which one taste nice, yumm I'll eat that first. Mum can I have some more. Heehee got her over a barrel. Hey what's happening, she got smart, now I have to eat everything.
LML

Try sprouting a small amount of your seed in a glass jar for a couple of days to see how "live" your seed is.If it's good quaility seed,most of it should sprout.If not,change suppliers.

SteveC wrote:Try sprouting a small amount of your seed in a glass jar for a couple of days to see how "live" your seed is.If it's good quaility seed,most of it should sprout.If not,change suppliers.

That’s exactly what I was going to say Steve. However, even in the best seed you will get about 1-2% of dead seed. This is normal. So if 99% sprouts you are fine.

I recently did a no-no and let my chook feed run out (for the chooks – not for the finches lol).

So I dropped by a pet chain-store after work to buy a small bag to hold them over until I could get to my normal produce store on the weekend.

Well, $13.00 for 2 Kgs (way expensive for chook food!!) but ok, I was desperate. I get it home, open it up and 2 Indian Meal Moths flew out!!!

I went into panic mode and chased and killed these little @#!$% ASAP. I then fumigated the room (it’s were I keep all my finch seeds). I ran my hand through the chook feed and it was filled with moth cocoons.

Suffice it to say I took this crap back and they just shrugged their shoulders with a “what’s the big deal it’s just chook feed?”

Well, to me it is a big deal. About 4 years ago my kitchen pantry, seed bins everything became infested with these Meal Moths. I would also find their maggots all over the place. The maggots would crawl along the ceiling and just drop into your coffee!! It took me 3 months to completely eradicate them. I also now keep everything in my pantry in plastic, sealable containers.

So now do you get why I hit the panic button? Lol

Anyway, lesson learnt – NEVER buy ANY seed/feed from Pet’s Paradise (oh did I say the name? oops…) or pet chain store for that matter.

Ive found if you use any of the chain stores you have to ask questions ...How long has been on the shelf ? What is the turnover , does it sell fast ?
I chased Avigrain for weeks till I finally found some very dusty bags at a pet chain , asked the questions and found another brand sold in big bags that was being ordered fortnightly because of demand , wasnt what I wanted (brand wise ) but it was fresh , dust free and clean.
Left the Avigrain behind , as much as it is a good brand it was no good to me if it had been siting on the shelf for ages .

jusdeb wrote:Ive found if you use any of the chain stores you have to ask questions ...How long has been on the shelf ? What is the turnover , does it sell fast ?
I chased Avigrain for weeks till I finally found some very dusty bags at a pet chain , asked the questions and found another brand sold in big bags that was being ordered fortnightly because of demand , wasnt what I wanted (brand wise ) but it was fresh , dust free and clean.
Left the Avigrain behind , as much as it is a good brand it was no good to me if it had been siting on the shelf for ages .

This stuff was in a clear plastic sealed bucket so I assumed it was safe. I later found out they fill the buckets themselves out the back from bags that get shipped in.

Bargara A lot of us get caught out with dud seed at some stage , Im sick of feeding it to the wild birds so I ask questions ... tried a new one today , the fella at the produce store was more than happy to show me before he bagged it for me ...Ill be going back to that place again. Hope you find a good supplier soon.

With these floods in QLD etc there won't be any old seed left anywhere. Problem then will be the radiated imported stuff

This is very true.

Might also find that the Lowes Milkd seed crops may be destroyed also.