What is bird chop?

What is bird chop?

Chop is a blend of chopped or processed mix of fresh and cooked foods combined into a meal and fed to birds. The photo below shows an example of what is typically included in our chop mixes.

Why feed chop? 

Traditional bird seed is lacking in 33 vital nutrients such as vitamin A, D, E, calcium, zinc, manganese, iodine, essential amino acids, fibre, omega 3, and more. Many of these nutrients can be found in vegetables and fresh food. Thus chop mixes are a great addition to supplement pet bird diets. 

Chop mixes are also a way to introduce new foods to birds that might be fussy about what they eat (bird that will only eat seed). It is an easy way for the owner to offer a variety of vegetables in which offered as a whole food the bird might not eat.

Additionally chop mixes are convenient as they can be frozen and thawed in portions or freeze dried to feed daily as needed. 

Please note that we discourage feeding a bird an exclusively vegetable diet. Birds who are fed an exclusively vegetable diets will display signs of poor growth and loss of condition. The chop we produce should always be fed in combination to a well balanced pellet.

Things to consider when attempting to convert your bird onto chop

1. If there is more seed in the cage than the bird will eat in a day, it will not touch the new foods offered.
2. Offer new foods in the morning, birds have their main meal first thing in the morning and will be most hungry at this time. 
3. Foods offered in a flat dish will be more attractive than foods offered in a deep dish. 
   
4. Birds learn through imitation, if they see others (bonded owner or other birds) eating the new food, they are more likely to accept new foods when offered by hand.  
5. Conversion may take months, but even the most stubborn birds can eventually be converted.   
   
6. If you are struggling to convert your birds, you can add the existing food they are eating (seed or pellets) to chop or mash and with each day remove a small amount of seed. Please make up this mix daily. The seed should eventually be eliminated after several weeks. We recommend starting off with our sweet potato mash if your birds are chronic seed eaters. 
7. Birds are neophobic (scared of new things) and often don't recognise new diets as food. Small parrots in particular may starve to death if you force them to convert to a new diet by withholding all other foods.  Daily weight checks and monitoring of the bird's droppings should be done during the conversion process. If you are struggling to convert your bird, or have concerns please consult your avian veterinarian for further advice.

For a video on how to introduce chop to your birds diet, refer to our “how to” videos page.