Showing posts with label
Feeding the caged white-rumped shama.
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Showing posts with label
Feeding the caged white-rumped shama.
Show all posts
Most commercial dry food will come in pellet form. Home made dry food will require some effort and time to make them into homogeneous pellets. This is how I would combine food ingredients into homogeneous pellets.
Ingredients:
combination of dry ingredients ground to a fine powder
low salt canned sardines rinsed and drained
minced raw lean beef after being wrapped in a towel to soak up excess moisture
raw egg yolks
The first three ingredients are thoroughly mixed together:
Next, the egg yolks are mixed in to form a dough:
This will then be put through a rotary grater, after which they will be cooked and dried at very low temperature in a turbo broiler for several hours.
The final result: 
Several hours will be needed at very low temperature to sufficiently cook and dry them. When properly done, these can be kept for several months, just like commercial dry pellets.
It should be noted that the above is just an example of the process involved in making shama pellets at home. The ingredients above are just examples and may not necessary represent an ideal combination.There are reasons for my preference that home made dry food should be in homogeneous pellet form. Offering the birds a combination of various separate dried ingredients without making them into homogeneous pellets will result in the birds picking out only the preferred ingredients and leaving the rest behind. There will also be spillage all over the cage floor and the surrounding area caused by this or by grinding up the various ingredients into a powdery form. Powdery dry food may also cause irritations to the nostrils and eyes. Shamas when given the choice will mostly prefer a pellet form dry food over powdery ones.It is important to bear in mind that when introducing any new ingredients into the dry food, it has to be done gradually. The bird’s digestive system will need time to adjust in order to produce the required amount of the necessary enzymes to cater to the digestion of the new food. For the same reason, the proportion of the various ingredients used in making the dry food should always be consistent from batch to batch. The moisture content of the final product should also be as consistent as possible and inconsistencies should be minimised by using the same amount of cooking and drying time, at the same temperature setting, from batch to batch. It is always a good practice to keep some dry food from the previous batch to be mixed with some of those from a newly made batch when starting on a new batch of dry food. This will allow the birds to adjust more gradually to any slight inconsistency between them. It is not unusual that a change or any inconsistencies in the dry food will trigger a drop in the bird's form and in more severe cases, could even result in a stress molt. Often, they are due to eating insufficiently or the inability of the digestive system to adjust to an abrupt change.
King Crimson - Cat Food
Insects such as crickets, mealworms and roaches are very high in chitin. When captive shamas are given the choice, they tend to pick out softer bodied insects that have lesser chitin, such as white mealworms that had just shed the skin. Although there is insufficient evidence to support my suspicion that the varieties of invertebrates that the shama will consume in the wild are overall much lesser in chitin compared to the insects fed to them in captivity, I am nevertheless quite convinced from many years of observations that the captive shama cannot be at its best when fed with a diet high in chitin or dietary fiber. I often see shamas showing signs of unwell and sometimes quite fluffed up after consuming large amounts of crickets and mealworms. Also, when fed for some time with a diet consisting of large amounts of crickets and mealworms, their appetite may decrease, prompting me to suspect that the large amount of chitin from these insects may cause some degree of impaction of the crop in captive shamas. Apart from my observations, there are also other reasons that led me to believe that a diet consisting of large amounts of chitin and dietary fiber may be quite unsuitable for the captive shama.
1) We do not know for sure whether or not the shama is able to produce chitinase enzymes but the fact that they regurgitate most of the indigestible chitin seems to suggest that chitinase activity is minimal even if it is present in the shama.
2) Unlike the graminivorous birds (grass eating) and folivorous birds (leave eating), the anatomy and physiology of the digestive tracts of insectivores like the shama are more suited to nutrient-compact diets with easily digestible fat and protein, utilizing these nutrients through an autoenzymatic type of digestion (by the enzymes produced from certain organs of the bird). The herbivorous birds on the other hand, have a digestive system relying partly on alloenzymatic digestion (by enzymes of microbial origin or fermentation) through which they are able to utilize the high fiber in their diet. It therefore appears to me that chitin and dietary fiber serves no nutritional purpose in the diet of the captive shama. Until they are regurgitated, large amounts of chitin or indigestible fiber in the crop could cause some degree of impaction which may also affect the appetite, as was often observed by me. They also dilute the nutrients of the diet and could quite possibly interfere with the digestion as well.
Keeping the above in mind, I had for quite some time now, avoided feeding large amounts of insects that are high in chitin. When it comes to feeding insects as part of their daily diet, I now feed crickets only sparingly and I would only use white mealworms. In order to substitute for the animal protein that may be lacking in this diet with very little live food, I have included substantial amounts of lean beef, sardines and eggs in my home-made pellets. Through many years of trials and errors, I have found these three sources of animal protein to be very good for the shama. As far as I know, my home-made pellets are also low in dietary fiber. My shamas rarely regurgitate.
Even during the molt, my birds are fed with very little live food and judging from the feather condition of the tails upon completion of their molt, this diet seems to be sufficient in animal protein. I have often been asked by my bird keeping friends how I had managed to keep my caged shamas in good and tight-feathered conditions most of the time, even during the molt. I would think that this is due to their nutrient-compact diet which is low in chitin, low in indigestible fiber and high in animal protein.
A basic understanding of nutrition, some research into the nutrient contents of the natural food of an insectivorous bird and information regarding the shama’s special needs in captivity, should form the basis of the novice hobbyist’s thoughts when it comes to what should be a suitable captive diet. The following are some of my thoughts related to the feeding of the captive shama.
1) Being an insectivore does not mean that the captive shama will thrive on a diet consisting of a limited variety of commercially farmed insects. The superficial summary from the journal of the occasional wild bird watcher of this species that it feeds on insects and small invertebrates, gives little indication of the wide variety of live food that is available in its wild habitat. The complexity of its natural instinct to pick out the suitable food from the wide variety available in the wild, for its nutritional needs at various stages of its life, must be far greater than can be catered for by simply supplying the captive shama with a limited variety of commercially farmed insects. Each of the different types of live food that it consumes in the wild will provide certain nutrients to make up for the total supply to cater for its overall nutritional needs. These cannot be replaced by merely providing commercially farmed crickets and mealworms as its main diet in captivity.
2) It is impossible to emulate the wild diet of the shama in captivity due to the lack of variety of live food available to the hobbyist and due to the lack of a complete understanding of its dietary habits. It is also incorrect to assume that the needs of the captive shama are the same as those of its wild cousins.
3) Avian literatures may sometimes refer to captive birds that are able to come into breeding condition as being in the best of condition. Apparently, inducing some species of insectivorous birds into breeding condition can be easily achieved by providing an all live food feeding regime, even if the variety of live food provided is limited. However, this does not necessarily indicate that the caged shama will be at its best in terms of health or performance when fed this way on a long termed basis.
4) A dry food formulated close to the nutritional needs of an insectivorous bird to be used as the main part of the diet, would be the best way to cater to its nutritional requirements in captivity. The ingredients that constitute the dry food will most probably be unnatural and foreign to the shama’s digestive system. Therefore, consideration has to be made as to whether the bird’s digestive system is able to accustom well to the dry food provided, so as to be able to break it down to assimilate the nutrients. A dry food that is made from ingredients that contain all the needed nutrients is useless if these ingredients are incompatible with the digestive system of the bird. Also, uneaten food cannot serve its purpose, hence the dry food has to be palatable to the bird as well. A suitable dry food in combination with some live food has been shown to be a good method of feeding our caged shamas.
5) There will always be some birds that can do extremely well on a particular diet while a few others just simply will not be able to thrive on this same diet. Being observant to how well the bird responds to its diet in order to make the right adjustments, may just be the key for success to bring out its best.
