Research has found that mortality among parrots is more often than not caused by malnutrition. A diet consisting of nothing but dry seed from a big box pet store are a danger to your parrots. They need nutrition from greens, leafy vegetables and foods high in Vitamin A and calcium. They need a wider variety of nutrition than an all-seed diet can offer. Diseases of all kinds and other issues which must be addressed by veterinarians are, for the most part caused by poor diet.
Unfortunately there are nutritional needs that some parrots never get because their diet isn’t balanced.
And if l’ve heard once, I’ve heard it a hundred times: “But he likes it!” It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t feed a child nothing but french fries and soda just because she likes it. Can you imagine the sort of person that child would be?
Get your bird off of the seed-only diet and try working some fresh stuff into their food. They need it if you want them to live a quality life free of disease. You need to do it gradually, but you will find that over time, they will become more accepting of more healthy selections.
An all-seed diet will most likely eventually slay your bird. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but eventually he will be deprived of other essential nutrients long enough and perish as a result. Begin working those healthy greens and healthy vegetables into her diet. You owe it to your bird.
These are an important part of a bird’s diet. The calcium and Vitamin A as well as other nutrients found in these vegetables is something your bird needs to maintain good health and raw greens and other healthy produce is the easiest method of delivering the goods.
There are many easy and convenient ways of preparing these vegetables that don’t tie you to the chopping board twice a day. Here is one of them: Chop There are others such as including them in Grain Bake and mixing pellets in with those vegetables.
Try serving them as snacks or try and eat a few chopped vegetables right along with them and see if that encourages them to try them.
Beans are a very convenient way of getting this important nutritional building block to your bird. You can easily learn to soak and cook dry beans safelv and most flocks learn to love these little gems. Other vegetables also provide nice amounts of protein. There are other high protein greens that work like beans and have other healthy nutrients along with the protein. This makes those greens a double win for your and for your bird.
Peas, kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli rabe and collard greens are all good sources of vegetable protein.
Junk food is called “junk food” for a reason. It’s pretty much devoid of any nutrition other than calories fat and salt. So it’s best to avoid the chips, the salted, bagged curly orange snacks, and anything that is deep dried, extruded and loaded with stuff your bird should avoid. Not only is it not healthy, it fills them up with stuff that does nothing for them and prevents them from eating the food they should eat.
This isn’t a good plan. So ditch the snacks for your flock. Just don’t give them these foods. Monitoring well-intentioned friends is probably a must in this case. Some people have good intentions, but when it comes to birds, most people simply don’t realize the damage these foods can cause
This is real simple. Birds need fresh clean water. And this means changing it at least once a day. Bacteria and birds have something in common: They both need water to live. And once their water bowl starts getting bacteria in it, the bacteria can multiply fairly quickly and that isn’t going to help her now is it? I always have a personal test. I look at the water bowl and think,
“Would I drink from that bowl?” If I wouldn’t, it’s time to change the water.
Now some birds are avid food dunkers. For instance, ifI give my Grey, Pepper a piece of whole grain toast, even if it has some almond butter on it, she is going to dunk the toast. Some of that toast is going to dissolve in the bowl of water and in effect it has become food for any bacteria in the bowl. This causes the bacteria to start raising a family and then I’ve got trouble.
To prevent this from harming Pepper, I have to change out that water. And sometimes I have to do it a couple oftimes a day. But that’s okay because that fresh water isn’t going to make her sick.
Preventing detritus from getting in the bowl is a good tip as well. For instance, if you find bird poop in her bowl, simply move the bowl, or move whatever perch or other item over the bowl that causes your bird to hit a bullseye right into the bowl. When caring for some relinquished Zebra Finches, I hadn’t observed that a perch ran across over the top of their water bowl. So I moved the water bowls to the opposite side of the cage and I had no more poop in the bowl.
Fresh water is a must-have for birds and ensuring they have it is critically important.
Keeping these things in mind are just a few of the ways to keep your parrot healthier and happier. The more you know, the better off your birds will be!