12/05/2025
Welcome to our world. Thursday was Restaurant Depot day this week. Hiding among the boxes of produce is volunteer Monika L. Helping us process our order is Edward, one of our faves, at Restaurant Depot. We shop for fresh produce at least once a week and include legumes and grains monthly on our shopping list. Today was a BIG shopping day. Today's legumes and grains consist of garbanzo beans, small red beans, Great Northern beans, green lentils, red lentils, yellow split-peas plus short-grain brown rice which we rinse, soak overnight and use our commercial rice cookers to prep this nutrient dense, complex carbs meal. We often add shredded greens to mix in and also add Barlean's cold-pressed flax seed oil to our mash for Omegas 3-6-9. We do add a blend of chia seed, h**p hearts and ground flax seed to our afternoon chop mixture to supplement Omegas 3-6-9 for our flocks' nutritional needs. This week's menus du jour include AM mash and PM chop enhanced with pellets, a small amount of seed or Nutriberries, and in-shell nuts. On today's shopping journey, we returned to TGF with pomegranates, kale, carrots, radishes, celery, fresh ginger, broccoli, zucchini, cauliflower, and red cabbage. Our walk-in contains fresh produce generously donated by our local grocery store and has apples, oranges, berries, jalapeños, red peppers, beets on hand. Our birds' AM feeding is from 7:30a-8:30a. Then dishes are removed, water dishes are washed, dried and refilled. Papers and p**p cleaned, enrichment replaced, species rooms swept, vacuumed and twice weekly birds are showered and cages are washed. When the weather allows, which is the birds' favorite, they're outside in social flocks in aviaries and flight cages. The PM chop-plus feeding is given between 2-3PM. As our glorious weather has finally slipped into chilly late Fall, the birds spend more time inside. Some days are crazy noisy and dance parties are common. Our steady volunteers are at the ready to help us keep a semblance of order, tidiness, and happiness prevails. At this time of year, darkness comes early and our flock settles down for the evening after sharing their vocalizations with whomever is there to listen. A thorough walk-thru is made of all buildings and rooms to make sure everyone's safely enclosed, that windows are securely closed, that temps are where they belong...then night-nights are said, lights are turned off, doors are locked and our team heads home, ready to greet the flock again the next morning. Hopefully, a good day was had by all.
BONUS - just in time for the holidays🦃: Be sure to visit our website where you can find all of our webinars! You won't want to miss our most recent webinar with Shauna Roberts, "Feeding Feathers - Fuel for Your Parrots". Both you and your flock will come away with easy to understand what and why nutritious foods are beneficial to feed our feathered companions.
