Feeding Your Parrot

No matter what type of parrot you have, it needs a quality diet to thrive. A balanced, varied, and healthy diet will help your parrot to be a valued member of the family for decades.

Inexperienced owners may think they can just buy a bag of parrot food at the store and be done with parrot feeding. Most commercial parrot food comes in pellet form and contains grains, fruits, seeds, and vegetables in addition to vitamins and minerals. While this food will provide 100% of the nutrients needed for survival, it is not a one-stop shop for parrot well-being.

Your parrot is a smart creature and will become bored if its food is the same day in and day out. A bored parrot is a noisy parrot. A bored parrot will act out in an attempt to relieve itself of boredom. You definitely do not want to have a bored parrot (especially when it is easy to have a happy one!).

Instead of a diet of 100% pellet food, change out about half of the food for fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cooked grains. It seems like an expensive idea at first – feeding a parrot people food? Parrot pellets are much cheaper! Don’t worry – this doesn’t have to be an expensive venture.

Check your supermarket for their sales and buy the fruits and vegetables that are in season. Buy the fruits and vegetables that you would normally buy for yourself and your family and chop up a portion of them for your parrot. Parrots love feeding on vegetables like sweet potatoes, green beans, eggplant, carrots, bell peppers, and corn. Fruits are also a popular treat. Your parrot won’t be bored when it sees the bright colors of kiwi, papaya, bananas, grapes, cherries, melon, and oranges. If you vary your parrot’s diet, it will never get bored.

For your parrot’s health, never feed it fruit seeds or pits, alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, cocoa, mushrooms, or avocado (guacamole). These are toxic to parrots and can cause serious health problems. Proper parrot feeding also involves avoiding processed foods that contain sugar, fat, salt, preservatives or additives like food coloring. Stick with natural foods – it’s healthier for your bird and for you.

Scientists haven’t exactly nailed down the exact diet that wild parrots eat, but this method of parrot feeding seems to be the one that keeps parrots the most healthy. Since most parrot health issues are from feeding and nutrition problems, be sure to follow our guidelines to keep your parrot healthy and happy.