RIO Grit & Mineral Mixture For Birds - 520 g

RIO Grit & Mineral Mixture For Birds - 520 g is a 520 g mineral and grit mixture from Rio, offered to birds in a small separate dish.

Key Features

• A mineral mixture rather than plain grit: Rio lists coquina, limestone, redstone, Cambrian clay, cedar nut shell and wood charcoal.
• Calcium and phosphorus from coquina: Which is crushed shell, and is the part most birds genuinely benefit from.
• Offered separately, not mixed in: A small dish of its own, so the bird takes what it wants and no more.
• Five hundred and twenty grams: A large pack for something used by the pinch, so one bag lasts a very long time.

Read This Before You Buy: Not Every Bird Needs Grit

• This matters more than any ingredient list, so it goes first.
• Budgies, cockatiels, parakeets and parrots shell their seed with their beaks and swallow the kernel. They do not need insoluble grit to grind food, and avian vets have been saying so for years.
• It matters because a bird that is unwell will sometimes eat grit compulsively, and a crop or gizzard packed with grit is a serious problem on top of whatever made the bird ill in the first place.
• Canaries, finches and other birds that swallow seed whole are a different case and may take a little. Pigeons and poultry are a different case again.
• What nearly every cage bird does need is a calcium source - a cuttlebone or a mineral block. That is not the same thing as grit, and it is the safer default.
• So: ask your vet or ask us before you put a dish of this in with a parrot or a budgie. For a canary or finch keeper it is a reasonable thing to offer.

What Rio Claims For The Ingredients, As Their Claim

• Rio says the Cambrian clay in the mixture detoxifies and supplies extra nutrients, that the cedar nut shell is adsorbing, astringent, antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory, and that the wood charcoal regulates stomach acidity.
• Those are the brand's claims and we are repeating them as the brand's claims rather than as facts about your bird. We have no way to verify any of them.
• What is not in dispute is the calcium. Crushed shell is a real calcium source and that part of the mixture does what it says.

If You Do Offer It

• A small dish, separate from the food, refreshed when it gets soiled rather than topped up.
• Watch how much goes. A bird that empties the dish is telling you something, and the something is usually worth a vet's opinion.
• Never mix it through the seed. That removes the bird's choice, which is the one safeguard the separate dish gives you.

Good To Know

• Keep it dry. Damp grit cakes and a caked dish is no use to anyone.
• If what you actually want is calcium, say so and we will point you at a cuttlebone or a mineral block instead. They are cheaper and they suit more birds.
• If a bird is actually unwell - quiet, fluffed up, sitting on the cage floor or not eating - that is a vet the same day. Birds hide illness until they cannot, and by the time it shows there is not much time.