Roudybush Daily Maintenance Bird Pellets

Roudybush is the quiet one in this category. No coloured pellets, no fruit pieces, no marketing — just the diet that came out of 16 years of nutritional research at UC Davis, where the university's own cockatiel and Orange-winged Amazon flocks have been fed on nothing else since 1981.

Daily Maintenance is the everyday formula: what an adult bird eats when it is not laying eggs and not feeding chicks. It is a complete diet, and Roudybush are firm that you should not add vitamin or mineral supplements on top of it — no cuttlebone, no mineral block.

Choosing the grind

This is the part people get wrong. The formula is identical across every grind — only the pellet diameter changes. Pick by the size of your bird's beak.

Roudybush's own rule: larger beak, larger pellet. And a practical note — the smaller the pellet, the less waste and mess on the floor.

Guaranteed analysis

Ingredients

Ground corn, ground wheat, soybean meal, soybean oil, alfalfa, calcium carbonate, dicalcium phosphate, salt, L-lysine, DL-methionine, L-arginine, niacin, silicon dioxide, citric acid, mixed tocopherols, vegetable oil, rosemary extract, alpha tocopherol acetate, ascorbic acid, manganese sulfate, yucca schidigera extract, dried yeast, biotin, calcium pantothenate, zinc oxide, riboflavin, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vitamin A acetate, thiamine mononitrate, potassium iodide, vitamin D3, folic acid, vitamin B12, sodium selenite, propionic acid, ammonium hydroxide, acetic acid, sorbic acid, tartaric acid, natural apple flavouring.

No artificial colours. Roudybush's stated reasoning is worth repeating: birds pick the colours they like out of a mixed bag and waste the rest, and coloured pellets stain white feathers. The pellets are also pelletised rather than extruded, which Roudybush say preserves more of the fibre.

Switching your bird onto Roudybush

Roudybush publish several methods. Two are worth knowing:

The height trick. Birds prefer to eat from the higher dish. Put the old food in a low dish and Roudybush in a higher one, with the water near the top dish. Curiosity plus preference does the work. When the old food drops below 10% of what is being eaten, take the low dish away.

The controlled switch. Two days for a small bird, three for a large one: remove the old food entirely. Line the cage with paper, not corncob litter, so you can read the droppings.

What the droppings tell you

• Very small, very dark green, almost black — the bird is not eating. Act.
• Clear liquid with little green — it is filling up on water instead of food.
• Light tan, larger volume — it has converted. This is what success looks like.

Roudybush's own warnings, worth taking literally: "Do not use this method on a thin bird, sick bird, or a bird you cannot monitor." "Keep your bird on Roudybush unless it loses more than 3% of its body weight." And: "Disappearance of food from the dish is not a reliable way of determining if your bird is eating" — birds throw unfamiliar pellets on the floor.

If it fails, go back to the old diet for seven days and try again. Most birds convert on the first attempt; stubborn ones usually go on the second. Weigh daily on a gram scale throughout, and speak to your avian vet before starting with a small or underweight bird.

Questions we get asked

Is the formula different between grinds?
No. Identical nutrition; only the diameter changes. Buy on beak size.

Can I mix it with my bird's seed?
Only as a deliberate gradual conversion (3/4 old to 1/4 Roudybush, increasing over three to four weeks). Left as a permanent mix, the bird will eat the seed and leave the pellets.

My African grey lays eggs constantly.
Roudybush's published advice is to mix two parts Maintenance with one part High-Energy Breeder, for the extra calcium. Do that with your avian vet's agreement — chronic egg laying needs veterinary management, not just a diet change.

Do I need to add cuttlebone or a mineral block?
No, and Roudybush advise against it. The diet is balanced and supplements can unbalance it.

Can my lory eat pellets?
Lories and lorikeets will take this diet and produce noticeably drier droppings on it than on nectar — which their owners tend to appreciate. Small grind for lories, Mini for lorikeets.

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