Make life too easy for your birds and they will over-eat high-energy foods. And fat birds are not fit and won't live as long as they should.

But we can encourage them to eat less by one simple technique. That is to improve the protein level of the food without increasing the fat level at the same time.

How does this work? Basically the bird requires a certain amount of protein every day to renew and replace its body tissues. It will eat until this requirement is satisfied. The lower the protein level in the diet the more the bird needs to eat. Any excess fat or carbohydrate is then stored as fat.

But feed the bird a higher protein level in the diet and it eats less so has less excess to turn into fat. It also reduces your seed bill!

There are two easy ways to raise the protein level. Firstly add Daily Essentials3 or BirdPark Essentials to the diet. The amino acids in these products improve the birds ability to utilise the protein they are eating. For more information read the article "Protein quality issues".

Alternatively add ProBoost SuperMax to the diet.

Weight control is also important for breeding birds. I recently borrowed a bird for a crop tube demonstration at a club talk. The bird, which was grossly overweight, had been sold to the local pet shop because the owner couldn't get it to breed. Infertility is a major problem with all obese animals!

No doubt many of you would like to know whether it works for humans? Yes it does! The trick is to eat high protein/low fat products. Unfortunately many high protein foods are also high in fat. Body builders however have been using this approach for years. Lots of lean beef and supplement products similar to ProBoost SuperMax!

For a guidleine of the weights of common birds click here.