Sunday, March 1, 2009

Replay call on egg laying and PDD

Having had trouble recently with so much egg laying this winter (over now, knock on wood!) I thought this would be an important talk for anyone going through, or trying to avoid, the same problem. It is a replay 0f Dr. Greg Rich, and will probably be up until Wednesday or Thursday. He really goes into fairly well how to avoid egg laying, or how to deal with it once they have started laying. He even brought up the diet issue, discussing how females being fed high energy (carbs, sugars, and fats) diets, are much more likely to think it is a great time to lay! He did not mention pellets, though. Pellets can really support hormones and egg laying, as they have very high (many say way too high) protein levels, and are full of simple carbs, as well as soy, which can mess with the hormone levels and really aggravate things. I have frequently read about, and have had pretty good success, switching hormonal birds to a high fiber, low protein and low fat diet. Any pellets fed the rest of the year should be natural ones, like TOPS. Very healthy (many, including myself, consider it to be the best, certainly one of the best, pellets!) and less likely to cause problems (not only hormones, but the multitude of other issues associated with pellets, like kidney and liver failure, vitamin toxicities, etc.)

He also talks extensively about PDD, something that is important for everyone with birds to know about. He really explains what it is, what the symptoms are, diagnostics, etc.

2 comments:

Tess Conrad said...

Love love LOVE Dr. Rich. I'm fortunate to have him as our very own exotics vet. Thanks for the resource, and I'm so happy to have stumbled upon your blog!

Meg said...

Lucky you! He sounds like a wonderful vet!