Bio PetActive Deep Mineral is a liquid mineral supplement for cage birds, young and adult, given in drinking water. Where a multivitamin covers vitamins, this one focuses on minerals — the part of a bird's diet a seed mix most reliably falls short on.

Why minerals, specifically

Vitamins get most of the attention, but minerals do quiet, essential work — they build bone and beak, sit at the centre of nerve and muscle function, and are what a laying hen draws on heavily to form eggshells. A seed-based diet is naturally low in several of them, calcium especially, and the shortfall tends to show at the worst moments: a growing chick that isn't developing well, a breeding hen laying thin-shelled or soft eggs, an older bird losing condition.

A liquid mineral supplement is a direct way to close that gap. Because it goes into the water, the bird takes it in a little at a time as it drinks — steady, and easy to keep up even for a bird that ignores a mineral block or cuttlebone.

• ✓Minerals a seed diet lacks. Targets the part of the diet most often short, rather than duplicating a multivitamin.
• ✓For young and adult birds. Supports growth in young birds and condition in adults.
• ✓Especially useful in breeding. The laying period is when a hen's mineral demand is highest.
• ✓Simple to give. Added to drinking water — no block or supplement the bird has to choose to use.

Deep Mineral or a multivitamin?

They cover different ground. A multivitamin drop tops up the vitamins a seed diet misses; Deep Mineral concentrates on minerals. Many keepers use both — a multivitamin as the everyday all-rounder and a mineral supplement layered in during breeding, growth, or moulting, when demand climbs. If you already give a broad multivitamin, this is the complement that covers what it doesn't, rather than more of the same.

Using it