Aussie Finch Forum

Was talking to a guy I know the other day who will be looking after the birds for a few days over Christmas. He has had gang gangs and cockatiels in the past and fed them both mealworms as live food (gang gangs I knew about but never heard of them for cockatiels before). He says he used to behead the mealies first before putting them out for the birds "so that they couldn't eat their way out of the birds".

I've never heard of hat theory or that practice before. My longtails won't take them and there doesn't seem to be any issue so far with the wrens or the chats. Is there anything to his, is it an old wives tail, should I be doing it for the finches.....

I keep frogs as well as finches. I know of a couple of cases where people feed mealworms to them & they have eaten the way through the stomach & the body of the frogs. Then again, frogs just gulp them down whole.

I have diamond firetails,plumb heads ,yellow rumps, all these finches seem to behead the mealies as they grab them with i might say great haste,dont think they really stand a chance, cheers gary.

as far as fnches go, dont bother they do all the work, remember they dont have humans beheading insects for them in the wild. If the mealy is too large for some finches I have seen them milk the mealy like squeezing the meat out of a sasuage skin and then discarding the sac. Let them do what they do best and use your time to observe your birds rather then in the kitchen beheadng mealies.

Then there`s the insectivorous finches that only eat the heads . Pictorellas, Blue Caps ect. If you had a mealie eat through the stomach of a finch i would say working on the law of averages , that birds days may have been numbered anyway.

My daughter has worked in a pet shop and told me that customers have reported this problem with lizards and frogs as well as birds and poultry, causing deaths!!!!! I must say I was astounded. I will be ripping their heads off in future. OFF WITH THEIR HEADS I SAY

Lizards and frogs eat entirely differently to birds. They swallow their prey whole, and in one gulp, whereas birds will chew on them to soften them up before swallowing, thus killing the insects. While I have no doubt that this may be a problem with lizards and frogs (who would rarely find mealworms in the wild I would think), I have never had it being a problem for birds. Mine all know to kill them first by ripping the heads off, then chewing out the oozy goodness

Finches either run them along their bill & squeeze out all the juice or just eat the heads & tails as DB said (Cordons are especially frustrating at this). Either way, the mealworm is well & truly killed before it goes down the gullet. Most softbills I've seen eating mealworms bash, tenderise & kill their live insects before feeding them whole to their young. And if I was a mealworm I'd hate my chances of running the gauntlet of a Gang Gang's mouth before getting to the softer interior bits without being seriously scathed. I don't think I'd ever bother beheading mealworms being fed to my birds. Many species lose interest when their live food isn't live & wriggling too.

Additionally, my birds only eat the head of the mealworm (mainly cordons and stars) and then leave the remainder of the mealworm untouched. They wont touch any part of the worm other than the head.

I have hand-fed mealworms to Gang-Gangs and can testify that they chew them up real good. I can definitely see where it could be a problem for reptiles and amphibians, and to a lesser extent with larger birds that are likely to swallow them whole, such as Pheasants and Chooks, but if they're getting as far as a chook's stomach, then I rekon the bird isn't getting enough grit. By rights, they should be getting ground up good and proper the minute they hit the gizzard.