Research carried out at the Institute of Animal Nutrition at the Hanover School of Veterinary
Medicine shed some light on the nutritional requirements of moulting cage birds. This work was reported at the International Symposium on Pet Bird Nutrition held in Hanover late last year.The researchers
compared the moulting performance of canaries by dividing them into three groups and feeding them differently.
Group 1 was fed on: An un-supplemented seed diet
Group 2 was fed on: Seed plus a moulting supplement high in calcium and sodium
Group 3 was fed on: Seed plus a moulting supplement high in
calcium, sodium, zinc and sulphur containing amino acids.
The supplements used were ones that were already on the market in Germany.
So that they could get as full a picture as possible of any effect these diets may have on moulting, the researchers looked at
three different features of the moult:
- The time from individual feather loss to the first appearance of the new feather (turnover time)
- The growth rate of the new feather
- The time from the onset of the moult (shedding feathers) to the completion of the moult.
Interestingly the results did not find that the supplements made any difference to either of the first two features - the turnover time or the feather growth rate. But the birds on no supplement or on the
second diet with a mineral only supplement were much more reluctant to start the moult and they took longer to go through the moult as they shed fewer feathers at any one time.
It seems that the birds fed
the sulphur containing amino acid supplement were far quicker to go into the moult. They dropped more feathers more quickly and so were able to go through the moult faster.
There is a simple explanation
for this. Feathers are mostly made of protein and the proteins in feathers contain larger quantities of sulphur containing amino acids than the protein in other parts of the body. Seed-based diets are
particularly low in these critical amino acids. Since mineral only supplements do not compensate for this shortage they did not prove adequate to promote a fast successful moult.
As far as
buying suitable products is concerned, The Birdcare Company developed a specialised moulting supplement called
