Pet Bird Diet and Nutrition:
The Key to Healthy Feathers and Skin
26 year old Marbles, our cranky old guy
Before we got Ollie, we had owned a few cockatiels and parakeets over a course of decades. Each had basically eaten an all seed diet with a few table scrap opportunities. And none of them lived more than a few years.
The average person thinks of parrots as one big group classification all having the same needs. After all, while there are multiple breeds of dogs and cats with varying physical characteristics, the food for them is more based on size and weight. That is because dogs are dogs and cats are cats. But pet dogs do NOT have the same diet or nutritional needs as other canines such as foxes or jackals, nor do pet cats have the same diet as wild felines such as tigers or bobcats.
It is even more complex when it comes to all the different parrot species. with their often not-too-subtle differences. The way a parrot looks, for example, is as important as its breeding habits and originating natural environment. One great example of this is the various rainforest parrot species. While rainforests are found in many areas of the world, they all have one thing in common. Not only is the rainforest very humid and warm, it is also dense and vertically tall. This allows different parrot species to occupy different "levels" within it. And the levels where they live also determine their diet AND breeding patterns since the various forms of vegetation also have different growing levels and needs. The relationship between everything in an environment is actually pretty darn complex!
There simply is no "one size fits all" diet for all the different parrot species. While they may live in our homes and be handled by humans when young, every pet parrot is and always remains a wild animal. Bird species were not manipulated genetically by humans to perform specific tasks, as were domestic dog breeds. Each parrot specie developed individual characteristics in nature, based on environment, available diet, breeding style and safety from predators in those specific geographic regions.
Ollie with an obvious mid-meal case of "foodie beak"!
Like most pet bird owners, we had limited knowledge and understanding of what constituted a healthy diet for our birds. Parakeets (budgerigars or "budgies") and cockatiels both originate in Australia. Cockatiels are actually small cockatoos while budgies are actually more closely related to lories and fig parrots and are only one of the various type of parakeet species found in the world. While they look very different, the two nomadic species only have slightly different needs because they both nomadic occupy similar spaces in the arid environments in which they naturally live.
We were just the average pet owners, relying on pet stores as the "experts" for making pet bird food purchases. Most pet stores, of course, stock varieties of dried, canned and even fresh food diets for dogs and cats. But, in the pet bird aisle, all we ever saw were bags of seed mixes, along with pellets and a few smaller "treats" that usually consisted of seeds and few additional dried ingredients--many of which just resemble sprinkles of dried spices or other mysterious stuff. Most of our pet birds lived an "average" lifespan for their species in captivity but we never really considered what that meant when we decided to adopt a larger parrot species.
We knew we couldn't just offer Ollie an all seed diet with a few bits of "table food" once in a while but we had NO idea how much of a specialized diet he would need. Although we aren't into a junk food diet and tend to eat fairly healthy with low sodium/low sugar and lots of fruits and veggies, there is much more to this when it comes to the nutritional needs of these upper canopy rainforest birds.
Example of the complexity of diet we offer our Eclectus parrot.
While we knew we needed to pay attention to offering our Eclectus fresh fruits and veggies, we had no real idea how MUCH we needed to learn about which items would fulfill his natural nutritional requirements and which items could actually prove problematic. And trust me, we made LOTS of errors while learning.
The obvious things to avoid are things which are toxic to birds. Since we already had cared for dogs for 25 years, we were aware of some of these already...things like chocolate, avocado and anything with artificial sweeteners like xylitol. However, while grapes and raisins area a big no no for dogs, these items are just fine for Ollie. And, while a carnivore diet is great for dogs, it isn't ok for parrots. They need to get most of their protein and fat sources from plant based sources. And Eclectus parrots specifically can develop high cholesterol just like humans if they consume too many high cholesterol foods like egg yolks or meat.
My next blog post will address some of the dietary issues we experienced and how we resolved them.
