The Birdcare Company's Feeding System
By Malcolm Green
At The Birdcare Company we approach cage bird supplementation
from a different philosophical direction to all the other bird feed
firms we know. The traditional approach is to look at all the
nutrients that typical diets seem to be deficient in and put them
into a supplement or a complete food. This gives rise to vitamin
supplements and mineral supplements of varying quality.
Manufacturers seem very reluctant to enter into a dialogue with
their customers and find out exactly what their products are doing
or, more importantly, what they are failing to achieve. This has
lead to huge numbers of pet and breeder birds still suffering from
common problems like feather plucking, slow and stressful moults,
obesity, poor breeding and high mortality.
Our perspective is different. We spend a huge amount of time
talking to bird keepers. During the sixteen weekends from 1st
November to 15th February we have attended no less than ten birds
shows and conferences. Five in Continental Europe, four in the UK
and one in Canada. We even fitted in one rabbit show and a trip to
California to meet Carol's prospective purchasers. We also take
about 7,000 enquiries a year from bird keepers by e-mail, telephone
or over the Internet. This is about 7 times as many enquiries as a
busy bird vet is likely to see in a year. So we spend a huge amount
of time understanding bird keepers problems.
Armed with a 'problem list' we then scoured the world for
nutrients and related ingredients that might help. We then evaluate
these ingredients mostly by using happy customers to tell us if they
see improvements. The net effect is that we have identified
ingredients that are scientifically evaluated in humans or other
animals which really do help solve many of the problems of modern
bird keeping. You can see why our products are not just vitamins and
minerals.
Our competitors seem to have the goal of keeping birds generally
healthy and alive. We have the goal of maximising their
well-being and enjoyment from life. And for breeders we want healthy
adults to produce lots of healthy chicks. Our approach really works
- as I am sure you already know. Here is a little extract from a
gouldian finch breeder in Canada who was so delighted with the
products that he decided to sell them:
'I wanted you to know that I took your
advice and now use no meds at all for molting chicks (no Ronivet-S,
etc). The Feast and everything else is working excellently. I am
actually placing them on DE3 with Feast. Two times a week I add
CalciBoost and Potent Brew. They are so amazingly alive.
However, at the first sign that they are ready to start shedding
their fledgling feathers and molting into their beautiful
plumage (usually 3 to 4 weeks after they leave Mom and Dad), I
start adding in some ProBoost SuperMax. They are amazingly
coming through the molt with life and vigour. I have so many
more babies on the way and I am making more room for them.
The best products in the world! You have done an amazing job
developing these products!
Serge'
Let us look briefly at one example - the 'Rapisorb' minerals
in all of our Essentials products.
Most traditional supplements contain what are technically
inorganic minerals. Things like sodium chloride (salt), magnesium
sulfate etc. These are not the form of minerals wild birds get in
their fresh sappy seeds, fruits etc. Naturally occurring minerals
are bound to more complex molecules like sugars and proteins. This
is called chelation and makes them 'organic' because they are
associated with an organic (carbon containing) molecule. As the gut
is designed to absorb these organic molecules it automatically gets
the minerals very efficiently. We introduced our 'Rapisorb'
ingredients way back in 1997 and nobody anywhere in the bird
supplements world has copied this approach.
Daily Essentials is a superior supplement so we encourage bird
keepers to buy our package of products and drop their old
supplements. The results are far better. A good example of this was
German zebra finch exhibitor Michael Sesterhenn. We first met
Michael when he came to our stand at the German AZ show (their
National) and thanked us for our contribution to his winning the
zebra finch section. We asked him how many birds he had entered and
what the other birds had achieved. His answer was a surprise - he
had only taken the one bird, the rest were all still molting slowly.
It turn out that the only product of ours he had been using was
ProBoost SuperMax. When he started using Daily Essentials3 instead
of his usual (German) vitamin supplement his birds molted very
quickly and at the next big show he had a team of 15 birds! Michael
now uses our full breeding system and produces twice as many babies
as before.
So you can begin to see why the products work as a system. Mix
ProBoost SuperMax with someone else's vitamin supplement and the
birds will miss out on important Birdcare Company nutrients and the
breeder will see lesser results.
So the basic systems are:
Pets and non-breeding birds: Feast (or
Flourish), Daily Essentials3, CalciBoost, Saniclens
Breeders: Feast (or Flourish), Daily
Essentials3, CalciBoost, ProBoost SuperMax, Potent Brew, Saniclens
Feather pluckers: Daily Essentials3, CalciBoost,
Potent Brew, SaniclensS
Sunflower junkies: Fussy Feeder Essentials,
CalciBoost, Saniclens
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