Low-cal treats okay
Roudybush avoids dyes, a staple of the colorful Lafeber food, because all available research on their effects is based on rodents, not birds. Anecdotal evidence suggests dyes cause behavioral problems in parrots, he says.

However, like Lafeber, Roudybush steams and compresses his diet into pellets rather than extrude--or grind--it. Extruded diets such as Harrison's don't work birds' gizzards enough, eventually weakening them to the point they have trouble digesting seed, he says.

Like most pelleted food makers, Roudybush advertises his diet as nutritionally complete for parrots, with no supplements required. However, his admonition to feed no more than 5 percent of non-pelleted foods refers to calories, not sheer amount, he says.

As long as pet owners supplement with vegetables and fruit and not high-calorie extras like sunflower seeds, they can still offer plenty of treats without throwing nutrition out of balance. For instance, you can give a bird almost as much broccoli as pellets because it contains only 12 percent of pellets' calories, Roudybush points out.

The cost of progress
Roudybush has been criticized for using animal testing to develop his bird food. His hopes that the Psittacine Research Project could avoid lethal experiments did not quite pan out as expected, he admits.

"Actually, we got really good at breeding cockatiels" for experiments, he says, including about 1,000 he hand raised himself.

Not all of the experiments resulted in suffering; many studied breeding and weaning. As for those that did, Roudybush is unapologetic. "A lot of people will say there is nothing worth enough to cause an animal misery. That is their point of view."

"My point of view is that I alleviate far more suffering and pain than I cause. And the beneficial information will be available for a very long time, unless all the libraries burn down. For me, doing research has a cost, not only money, time and effort, but also the effect on the critter. You have to travel the road before you can begin to apply the knowledge."

Formulated diets have helped end the health problems caused by all-seed diets, says Roudybush, who asserts only about 5 percent of diseases veterinarians diagnose today are due to nutritional deficiencies. That advance in turn has enabled this country to raise its own supply of pet parrots rather than rely on the cruel import industry.

Possible feather-picking cure
Roudybush is eager to see how successful his new allergy diet will be for parrots who pluck out their own feathers, a huge problem for some owners of larger species such as cockatoos.

"I'm sure that feather picking is more than one thing. But if 30 or 40 percent of birds pick their feathers because of food allergies, and if we can eliminate those items, then that's a pretty good game."

Second to developing new feeds, Roudybush most enjoys hearing from satisfied customers, especially those he helps by sharing his knowledge.

"I get to hear people say, 'You saved my bird's life because of something you taught me,' such as the man whose nestlings' crops weren't emptying because he was diluting the hand-feeding formula too much.

Snail nutrition
What's next for Roudybush? He intends to continue guiding his company for at least the next 10 years, but after that, he hopes to return to his first love: full-time research.

He keeps a hand in UC-Davis' ongoing Psittacine Research Project, now 23 years old, most recently participating in an experiment that proved protein does not cause gout in birds.

But he misses traveling the world to observe other bird species, such as the migratory ducks whose nesting habits he studied for six months on the Alaskan tundra by counting the rings of their egg yolks.

For his next big research project, Roudybush is thinking... abalone. Abalone?

"Different, huh? The nutritional requirements of a marine snail! For 30 or 40 years people have been trying to grow them with little success." He's already conducted preliminary research at a couple of abalone farms.

Wherever research takes him, the thrill of cracking nutritional riddles will be its own reward.

"I've always wanted someone to say to me, 'I'm really pleased you did this work for us,' so that I could set the record straight. I would tell them I didn't do it for them, I did it for me. I just wanted to know."

ParrotChronicles.com

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