How to feed your pet parrot

We love our birds, and want to give our pets the best food to keep them as healthy as possible. Here’s the bad news: there is no single diet on the market that you can scoop from a bag and be done. But don’t be discouraged. The good news is that there are great diets available for our birds, and it’s easy to supplement them with a variety of healthy foods that you have right in your own kitchen.

Why don’t we have a single perfect diet? That’s a great question - and the answer comes from our birds themselves. Our pet parrot species originate all over the world, and each adapted to their native habitats. So a wild cockatoo from Australia is eating a completely different variety of plants than an amazon from Brazil. Then, each individual bird’s nutritional needs change over time: a mature adult needs far fewer calories per day than a growing chick, and an egg-laying hen needs far more calcium than when she’s not reproducing. Lastly, think of how smart and social your bird is - they often form strong food preferences in the first months of their lives, and self preservation instincts can prevent them from trying new foods (think about those poisonous berries out in the wild - the birds that survive are the cautious ones who only eat what their flock-mates are eating).

Can’t birds just eat seeds? Nope. Seeds are high in fat and deficient in many vitamins. They’re pretty much the bird equivalent of eating at McDonald’s every day: delicious, but so not healthy.
So, what’s the recipe for success?

• Start with a high quality pelleted diet designed for your bird. This should make up 60-75% of your bird’s daily intake. Good brands include Harrison’s, Roudybush, and Zupreem.
• Next, offer fresh food daily. This should be 20-30% of your parrot’s daily diet, and includes fruits, vegetables, greens, and cooked beans or pulses (like lentils). Variety is key here - change up your bird’s salad ingredients frequently to ensure a balanced diet. Organic produce is best, but if not available make sure to rinse thoroughly and peel when possible to decrease pesticide residue.
• Last, up to 10% of your parrot’s diet can be treats: seeds, nuts, dairy (like hard cheeses), and processed grains like bread, crackers, cereal, and pasta.
• Remember, AVOID avocados, chocolate, rhubarb, onions, and all the pits of stone fruits. These are toxic to parrots.
• Quantity counts too: a budgie needs only 12-16 Calories per day, while a large macaw tops out around 220 Calories per day.

Parrots don’t need grit or cuttlebones. While many cockatiels will happily ingest small quantities and be perfectly fine, some individuals will swallow large pieces of cuttlebone or too much grit and obstruct their intestinal tract. Parrots hull their seeds before swallowing, so they don’t need grit to break down seeds like pigeons and doves do. That’s also the reason that fortified seed mixes aren’t as healthy as the marketing would have you believe - the added vitamins get left in the seed cup along with the hull.

Help - my bird only eats seeds! What do I do?
This plan applies to any new food - fresh or pellets - whether we’re starting with an all seed diet or just trying to add some variety to a more healthy diet.

• Start with a vet exam - we never want to abruptly change a sick bird’s diet.
• Train your bird to meal-feed on the current food (this means getting rid of the full seed cup and measuring how much your bird eats in a given day - then divide this amount into two or three portions).
• Add a small amount of new food and limit the quantity of old food at each meal (start with 25% new at the very most), then gradually increase the proportion of new food; OR, feed the new food for breakfast, with no old food, and then offer the old food at lunch and dinner. Gradually increase the time until the old food is offered as your bird eats more of the new foods.

Be patient and DON'T GIVE UP!
Parrots are naturally suspicious creatures, and it usually takes over 20 times of seeing a particular food before they will accept it.

• The transition can take YEARS. Be glad that bird servings are tiny - you will throw away many, many untouched meals.
• Never try to force your bird - they are quite capable of starving themselves to death.
• Monitor stool production - if it decreases then your bird may not be eating enough and you need to go more slowly (but color change and some large soft stools can be normal when introducing fresh fruits/veggies).
• Some birds will never reach “ideal” diet, but even accepting one or two new foods is worth the trouble.

Tips and tricks for seed addicts:

• Offer a small amount of new food at a time (one piece can be more enticing than a pile).
• Mix grated veggies in with seeds - even if your bird picks through and only eats the seeds, at least he or she will be on her way to those 20 tastes. Remember to swap out for clean dry seeds after an hour to avoid spoilage.
• Play with Texture
  • finely chop vegetables or grate them in food processor - or offer huge hunks to large birds
  • mash cooked foods
  • switch between raw, thawed from frozen, or cooked (avoid canned unless salt-free and thoroughly rinsed)
  • for pellets, try blending them to dust and adding to a favorite food, or softening the pellets in water, tomato sauce, juice, applesauce, etc.
• Vary the color - most pellet colors actually taste the same, but many birds prefer red.
• Spice it up - many birds love heavily spiced foods. Try cinnamon, chili powder (or whole chili peppers), cumin, turmeric, cayenne pepper, etc. Make sure to use spices with no added salt.
• Model good eating habits - cut a slice of your apple and hand it to your bird, or take a bite of that pellet. Some birds will try new foods when invited into the dining room but not when hanging out in their cage by themselves.
• Try LaFeber’s Nutriberries - these make a great transition diet for seed junkies. They consist of hulled seeds in a vitamin-enriched matrix. Warm gently in the microwave and break them into seed-sized bites for quicker acceptance, since most seed-eating small birds don’t want to work hard enough to pry the seeds out from the ball at first.

With lots of patience and persistence, your bird can learn to enjoy a variety of foods. Not only is a balanced diet the foundation for a healthy pet, but you'll get to have fun at mealtime with your feathered friend, too.

Photo credit Geek2Nurse, www.flickr.com

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