Hand Feed Baby Birds? Critical Warning!

Link to 1st Post on Recall

Since posting about a recall of Kaytee Exact a week ago on April 20, we've been contacted by others who hadn't heard of this danger to their baby birds and may lose them.

A young Senegal Parrot
Photo from southtexasaviary.com

Jammie writes: "Unfortunately, we have some babies that were fed this formula. We currently have a 6 week old senegal that we are worried won't make it through the night. And a 4 month old macaw baby who is showing all the signs and symptoms that Kaytee mentions on their web site. We are taking all of our birds who were fed the bad food to the vet on Monday for lab. Praying this little senegal can hold on.
http://www.kaytee.com/pet-birds/kaytee-exact-hand-feeding-update.htm"

Very sad and we pray for them too. We are grateful to a reader who first shared this sad recall news with us and want to notify as many bird breeders as possible. Everyone, spread the information as widely as you can.

If you've purchased Kaytee Exact Hand Feeding Formula, go to their website Kaytee Exact Recall Site and be certain you have SAFE food for your youngsters. Symptoms from Kaytee's food with too much Vitamin D are: "Baby birds that have consumed formula with high vitamin D levels may become weak and inactive and show a lack of appetite, vomiting, increased thirst, and have increased urine excretion (watery droppings)."

Kaytee's site tells you where to look for the recall dates on their product. They're also given on our first post about this, on the site at the top of this page. What Kaytee doesn't mention, however, is that  if you have an open bag of the 5 lb. Exact Hand Feeding Formula, the date has probably been torn off. That was the circumstance with our bag. By chance, luckily I wrote the expiration date down when I opened it. I remember being annoyed at the time that they'd put the date where it could be ripped through and lost. Even though our bag's date is January 17, 2013 the whole situation with the food makes me uneasy.

My hand written date of expiration shown above.
Top edge of bag is designed to tear right through the expiration date.
Their closure zip strip doesn't close adequately either. Frown.
I fold the bag over several times and use large clips to hold it shut tightly.
In the photo it's not shut or the handwritten date wouldn't show.

If you, too, no longer have a date on your bag, contact the store or online retailer where you bought it. They may be able to tell you what dates they stocked. Certainly, Kaytee should have records of where they sent their product manufactured on a certain date. They will have notified those retailers to remove it, but a lot of it has already gone to consumers like you and me. We can hope the retailers contacted any and all customers they know of, and have placed signs and information up about the recall. The retailer where I bought my product has NO INFORMATION up about this at all!

Hopefully, you have a receipt that shows when and where you bought it. Possibly a canceled check, a credit card statement, an order confirmation email if bought online, or an account order history from an online retailer. This won't tell you what the expiration date was, but might give the retailer some indication of whether he was selling the "bad" dates at that time. If you still can't be certain, contact Kaytee and ask for a replacement. Don't feed your Exact Hand Feeding Formula if you can't be certain it's not among their recall dates.

If you are among those unfortunate to have sick or dead birds as a result of feeding Kaytee's  formula with too much Vitamin D in it, I hope Kaytee makes financial restitution to you...even though that's of little comfort.

Best of luck and God Bless you and your birds.

A baby Rosy Bourke Parakeet