RIO Vitamin & Mineral Pellets For Canaries & Small Birds - 120 g

RIO Vitamin & Mineral Pellets For Canaries & Small Birds - 120 g is a vitamin and mineral pellet from Rio, fed in small amounts alongside the usual diet of canaries, exotic birds and other small birds.

Key Features

• A supplement pellet, not a complete diet: This is the distinction that matters: it is not the pelleted food that replaces a seed mix, it is a small addition to one.
• Vitamins and minerals in a pellet: Which is easier to get into a bird than a powder on its food, because the bird eats it rather than the bottom of the bowl.
• Aimed at indoor birds: Rio's reasoning is that a bird kept inside misses out on things an outdoor bird gets, and the section below explains the part of that which is genuinely true.
• For canaries, exotic birds and other small birds: Sized and formulated for these birds.

The Vitamin D Point, Which Is Real

• Rio says these pellets address vitamin D3 deficiency in birds kept indoors, and that part is worth taking seriously.
• Birds make vitamin D in the skin using ultraviolet light, and window glass blocks the wavelength that does it. So a bird that lives inside behind glass, with no special lighting, genuinely cannot make its own - and without vitamin D it cannot use calcium properly, whatever calcium you provide.
• That is why a cuttlebone on its own is not always enough, and it is the honest argument for a supplement like this one.
• The alternatives are a proper avian ultraviolet lamp, or supervised time outdoors in real daylight out of the midday sun. Ask us and we will talk through which suits your setup.

Vitamin A, And A Claim We Will Not Make

• Supplements like this are sometimes sold as improving a bird's eyesight. We will not tell you that, because a vitamin pellet does not do it.
• Vitamin A does matter to eye and respiratory health, and seed diets are short of it, which is a fair reason to supplement. That is a different sentence from improving a bird's eyesight.
• This is a complementary food. It goes alongside the daily diet rather than replacing it.

How To Give It

• Small amounts, as directed on the pack, alongside the normal diet rather than instead of part of it.
• More is not better. Fat-soluble vitamins accumulate, and it is possible to overdo vitamins A and D in a small bird.
• If your bird is on a complete pelleted diet already, it probably does not need this at all. Tell us what you feed and we will say.

Good To Know

• A small pack, which is the right size for something given by the pinch.
• Keep the pack sealed, dry and out of the sun, and look at it before you use it. Anything musty, caked or webbed goes in the bin.
• 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.