Well of course we google. LOL You know google is one of my good friends. I had come across that same article...and according to that ash is an important part of your pets diet, BUT it also states that The minerals contained in ash include calcium, iron, magnesium, sodium and zinc, along with trace amounts of many others.
ZINC??? and many "others"? Again huh? Does that apply to the ash in bird foods too? Or does it depend on where the ash comes from?

Like Tess, I only use the Abba during molts, but if the ash content is harmful I wouldn't even want to use it then.

Of course birds in the wild don't get "perfect" food. We humans have exposed wildlife to all sorts of bad things.
Point being the wild ones don't have as long a lifespan partly do to US ...and OUR captive birds DO have a choice of going organic if WE as their parents choose to give them as healthy a diet as possible.
So, your hubby did bring up a good point tess, but kind of made the wrong point. LOL If that makes sense.

I guess I should have put the good point my hubby made in context. He does not believe that chemicals are good for birds, quite the contrary he believes they are harmful.

What he meant while we were talking about Petamine and Abba is that if we give it only during moult and natural organic ingredients all other times we shouldn't worry so much about the additives in Petamine and Abba. We are still doing way better than the wild birds get daily.

He thinks we all worry too much and should love our keets and be happy to have them.

His motto is do the best that you can and move on and when you know better you will do better but live each day just for now enjoy.

on that note...when you know better...you will do better....

well we do know better...ALLLLL of us know better...and most will try to do better.

but every once in awhile...along comes someone who likes to "kick up the dirt" and just finds change a hard thing to accept.

Makes perfect sense to me.

It's just a shame that we have violated so many species environments the way we have. While I understand that we may have done some of these things previous to our knowledge of just how detrimental it could be on our surroundings and to the lives of other species, I just can't wrap my mind around the damage that we have caused to our planet to better our lifestyle, only to figure out that we have made things a lot worse for ourselves. Irony at it's best.

Amen, agree whole heartily

yes XPR and thats the thing tho...once its figured out there is a better way to do things and need to modify what you have previously been doing...it serves no purpose to continue with old convictions...its TIME for change.

Agreed. Although, most of our solutions may help the initial problem. They also introduce new problems because we are hasty due to the fact that what we were doing had caused such extensive damage.

a discussion for another thread for sure lol

as in not all cases is this the situation...most often i find it to be the opposite ...we tend to over scrutinize to the point of no return...

case in point...the so called global warming scenario...and now our nuclear plants....alternative energy sources...so on so forth