Yah, I'd stay with basic foods too, I fed my bird maybe two days rabbit, one day quail, and maybe two days beaf heart ( with the fat and grissle trimed away ) and one day rabbit, next day quail. She has done very well now for two years and her feathers show no fret marks.
I came across this page www.rodentpro.com/qpage_articles_03.asp on Rodent Pro's website which has some great details regarding the nutritional content of a variety of prey species. Surprisingly they cover a wide variety of animals they don't carry. Even Hamster is listed.
One thing I found interesting, and I have been unable to find listed elsewhere, was the calcium content values (table 3, first column). The low calcium available in younger mice is quite marked, less than half or worse than an adult mouse. While the adult mouse is on par with an adult quail and only surpassed by grinding up an entire juvenile deer or calf.
At the bottom of table 2 they have a Note: "Vitamin E deficiency, adversely impacting reproduction and health, has been documented in raptors that were being fed a diet consisting only of whole quail. To provide adequate levels of vitamin E to the secondary consumer it is necessary to feed the prey quail approximately 200IU vitamin E per kg. dietary dm." but they don't mention if they actually DO feed their own quail with vitamin E supplements.
I've had it in the back of my mind that keeping a bag of adult mice from Rodent Pro could be a good supplement to Sparrows/Starlings (trapped or hunted).
Some food for thought
~Blake
P.S. This post was originally in its own thread for no explainable reason other than I must have been temporarily blind when looking for where to post it.
Blake: THANKS alot, I will enjoy reading the tables, I did know about deer meat, I eat a bit of it regulary, A hold lot of it, back strap, sausage, neck steaks, etc. Wes (the meat eater)
Actually, table 3 is titled "Mineral content of whole prey...". Which means you'd have to be eating the bones of the deer as well as just the venison .
It's strange thinking of eating an entire deer, but considering most of the other animals listed are significantly smaller and the site is mostly oriented towards reptile food (which eat their food whole) it makes sense.
I'm curious what people are doing about the calcium in their bird's diet, especially with regards to kestrels. With the incredibly small amount of food that a Kestrel eats in a day to stay on weight target, and the tidbitting that goes on during training, I would expect that the bird would be nearly fed by the end of a training session. Presumably having bone in the tidbits would be unworkable, and then there's not much else left to eat after training to provide the calcium.
Or perhaps I'm entirely missing something, the books I ordered won't come until Monday and I haven't found much explaining raptor nutrition online =)
Post by Master Yarak on Dec 11, 2004 19:36:43 GMT -5
Vitamin suplements like "Vita-Hawk" are specifically designed to provide raptors with very specific amounts of minerals and vitamins to replace and replinish what their bodies metabolize. I have used it regularly for a long time. Calcium is vital to a growing raptor. The average RT hatches from a chicken size egg and reaches adult size in about eight weeks. The bones are almost fully grown during that period. My bird eats evrything it catches. That is mostly fox squirrels. She also gets rabbit, snake, Beef heart and very rarely chicken. NO health related issues or dietary defiencies have ever accured. I recommend using raptor vitamins. Good info from pro-rodents thanks for sharing. Yarak
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away
Blake : I can't speak for the Kestal Fliers. I fly a R/T and my tidbits are very small, about the size of a match stick (1/4 - 1 1/2 grams) and sometimes T/B's are larger, feed her WHOLE food on a lure, depending on training schedule. I crush larger bones (leave in meat) for easier eating and handling, but I do use supplements with vitamins (vita hawk). If that helps you to understand more. wes
Thanks for the endorsement of Vitahawk. I'd heard of it before but wasn't sure if many people actually used it or it was general considered snake oil of sorts.
Wes,
1/4 gram? With an RT? Wow. Perhaps I'm just more accustomed to measuring meat in fractions of a pound instead of fractions of a gram, but I'm surprised to hear a RT responds well to such small portions. Or for that matter the handling of the meat by the trainer doesn't get in the way of training, regardless of the bird.
I guess I'm just chasing random musings around right now while I wait for the real stack of information to arrive in the mail Monday. Tomorrow is football so perhaps I won't be such a pest much longer =)
Blake, Wes's technique is the same one I use, except I weight in oz. There is no problems with handling(of meat) cause the bird gets the whole Tbit(about .5oz). Thus the bird never sees the falconer take away food. I only feed large pieces when I'm feeding on lure or feeding up on glove. I also use Vita hawk but only when I feed Beef Heart. If I'm feeding squirrel, then that has enough vitamins for the bird. I rotate between types of food often i.e squirrel,Quail,and Beef Heart.-Zach
Last Edit: Dec 11, 2004 21:43:50 GMT -5 by Tiercel78
I used to think i knew some things. But i'm not so sure anymore.
Thanks T 78 for the help, Blake, your not a pest, just don't have the experince, YET! Please don't compair, Yarak's, Bane is a many year intermewed bird. Experinced, a True Hunting Machine! My, Clou was trapped 4 weeks ago, still in training, she'll do jump ups and fly to glove out to 120' +, 15 to 20 times and more at the sound of the whistle, (and not crop up) and still crush the lure after. She only knows there is SOMETHING ON the glove. Using different food values, someone could be using larger tidtibs. There are other ways of training and dropping weight than what I do, and they work very well, ie different food quality and nutrition values. Your sponsor could explain it better than I can. wes
I have a food calculator, that gives you an approx amount of food per type of raptor. It tells you how much to feed for different types of meat, different temps and different types of birds(by weight) If anyone wants this calculator, I can send it to you via e-mail.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
Weasel ,Thanks for the food cal. its very close. Went back and checked my records for both birds. Only a small adjustment was needed to alot for each birds metabolism to make Calculator work for them. (can't beat good records-logs) Lots faster than going back and search though records, to make an educated guess. Has anyone any info on feeding racoon? If you try it, be cautious with amount being feed, coon is very faty meat. For your info. Wes
Here are some interesting facts about types of meat we use.
INTRO TO MUSCLE: Muscle tissue comes in two extreme forms, red (dark meat) and white (white meat) and some in between forms (some call pink).
Dark meat is red because it 1. has loads of capillaries with red blood cells and 2. has myoglobin (similar to hemoglobin) that helps store oxygen. Red meat has more stored fat than white meat and therefore usually has more calories per gram than white meat.
Red meat, with its larger store of oxygen, fat, and blood vessels is an endurance specialist-- thus migratory birds have lots of dark meat (red muscle cells) in their breast muscles. Ground-dwelling birds have lots of dark meat in their legs.
Muscle cells also store glucose (sugar) in long chains called glycogen. Muscles are able to pull glucose and fats from the blood stream and concentrate those energy stores in the muscle cells at higher levels than those found in the blood stream.
White meat, with its larger store of glycogen (glucose = sugar) is a sprinting specialist-- thus nonmigratory birds (like chicken & turkey) have more white meat in their breast muscle, but red meat in their legs.
WASHED MEAT: Soaking any cell in water causes water to move into the cell via a process called osmosis. Animal cells will explode when enough water moves in. (you can demonstrate this by dropping red blood cells into a bit of water and seeing the water turn slightly cloudy as the cells rupture and release their proteins.)
When muscle cells explode, the stored fats and glycogen will escape from inside the cells. When you pour off the water, you are removing much of the stored nutrients from inside the cells.
Muscle fibers are bundled together and wrapped in sheaths, and wrapped in more strong sheaths, so the meat doesn't turn to mush when soaked.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
I have a food calculator, that gives you an approx amount of food per type of raptor. It tells you how much to feed for different types of meat, different temps and different types of birds(by weight) If anyone wants this calculator, I can send it to you via e-mail.
Noel can you send me a copy? Falcon8696032@yahoo.com