Like most parrot owners, you probably know the importance of feeding your bird a healthy diet. A well-balanced diet is key to keeping pet and aviary birds healthy. Lack of proper nutrition is a chief cause of premature death, beak, nail and feather problems; poor reproduction performance, and neurological disorders common among companion birds.

Because of the importance of diet, your veterinarian probably has or will make specific recommendations regarding what your parrot should and should not eat. Most avian veterinarians generally recommend that 70 – 80 percent of a parrot's diet be comprised of a commercially manufactured, formulated diet such as pellets, and the remaining 30 to 20 percent of the diet be made up of healthy table foods, fruits and vegetables, and seeds.

FORMULATED DIETS VS. SEED-ONLY DIETS

Pelleted or formulated food is a bend of ingredients such as grains, seeds, fruits, vegetable, and other protein sources. During the manufacturing process, the ingredients are cooked together at a high temperature, and then formed into uniformed pellets or "extruded" kibble.

Most of the formulated diets on the market are a complete and balanced diet. With a formulated diet, the parrot gets a wide variety of nutrients in ever bite. On the other hand when parrots are fed a seed mix as their main diet, they often eat "cafeteria style," picking out the seeds they want to eat and ignoring the rest – thus missing out on a lot of important nutrients.

Many seed – especially sunflower seeds and peanuts – are high in fat and have very little nutritional value. Current research has found that all-seed diets are deficient in calcium, protein, vitamins and amino acids. If you feed seed, they should make up no more than 20 percent of your parrot's diet.

A pelleted diet sounds like a better choice than a seed-based diet, but actually getting your parrot to eat a proper diet might be another story – especially if you parrot has been living on seeds for a while. You have a collection of different brands of pelleted foods in your cupboard, each of which was rejected by your parrot.

It's important to understand up-front that it's typically pet owners themselves who inadvertently allow their parrots to developed eating habits. A lot of parrot owners see that their parrot loves sunflower seeds and peanuts – and because they want to make the bird happy – they make that the bulk of the bird's diet.

Adding to the problem is the fact that pet owners often feed too much food to their parrots, without monitoring what the bird is eating, The owner may provide a mix that has a half dozen different ingredients in it, but if sunflower is a high proportion of that and the parrot is fed a larger quantity that what it needs, the bird can easily pick out all the sunflower seeds, satiate its appetite, and the rest is thrown out at the end of the day by the owner. The bird learns that every day there's going to be more food than it can eat, and so it can pick out its favorite food and that's all it really needs to eat. Once the pattern becomes ingrained, it can be difficult to break.

FEEDING A BETTER DIET

Obviously your best bet is to not allow your parrot to become a "seed junkie" in the first place. So, if you're getting ready to buy a newly weaned parrot, make sure the breeder has weaned it onto a diet of pellets and other healthy foods, ands stick with this eating regimen when you get the bird home. But what if you've got a very stubborn adult bird that's been filling up on only seeds for many months or years. You can still reform its eating habits, but it will take time, patience and determination on your part.

1. CONFIRM GOOD HEALTH

Before you make any modifications in your parrot's diet, first take it in for a veterinary examination to make sure your bird is in good health. Birds are adept at hiding illness, and the stress of a diet change may be too much for a bird that's sick. If your bird has a clean bill of health you can be a little more determined about trying to get it to eat a new diet, because you know if it is on a hunger strike for a day or two, it's not going to hurt it.

2. FEED THE NEW DIET IN THE MORNING

Offer the new diet to your parrot in the morning, with no access to seeds. "Birds are the most hungry when they first wake up in the morning, and that's when they're usually more willing to try new foods. Put a couple of different brands of pellets in your bird's bowl, and perhaps some fresh vegetables and fruit as well. Leave the pellets in the cage all day, but remove the fresh produce after one to two hours to avoid spoilage problems.

If your parrot hasn't eaten any of he pellets by the end of the day, offer some seed for perhaps 30 to 60 minutes in the evening, and then take the bowl away. But understand that you don't have to offer seeds. "No bird is going to starve to death in just one day.

The next morning, offer the pellets, fruits and vegetables again. If your parrot doesn't eat all day, give it some seed for a short period of time in the evening, and them take the bowl away after an hour or two. Keep repeating this routine each day until your bird starts eating the pellets.

Most birds get hungry after a couple of days of this and the pellets start to look pretty good.

3. DON'T MIX OLD AND NEW

One common mistake you should avoid is mixing the old diet with the new. As long as there's a large enough quantity in the bowl of the food your bird likes, the parrot is just going to eat what it wants out of that mixture. By missing the pellets and sunflower seeds together, you're teaching the bird it has a choice in what it wants to eat.

In order to successfully convert your bird over to the new diet try rotating what foods go in the bird's cage, proportionate to that which the bird should eat. If your bird should be eating 80 percent pellets, then pellets also should be in the cage 80 percent of the time.; If seeds should only make up 5 percent of your bird's daily intake, you should only allow it to have seeds in the cage for around a half-hour a day. You must teach your bird that at 4 o'clock, for example, it's allowed eating seeds for a half-hour and during the other 23-½ hours it only gets pellets.

4. MAKE PELLETS APPEALING

You can make pellets more tempting to your parrot by using a few tricks. Moisten the pellets with unsweetened fruit juice or the juice from a can of natural-style fruit cocktail. But only leave the moistened pellets in the cup for an hour, to percent the grown of bacteria. Try offering a variety of different types and brands to your parrot. Try both plain brown pellets and the rainbow colored ones to see if your bird has preference, also try different sizes. Some parrots want little bite-sized pieces, while others prefer to have a big chunky pellet they can hold with their foot and munch on.

Another option is to make a wet mash of finely chopped fruits and vegetables water and pellets that all been blended together into kind of a soft, liquid dinner. You can also mix a few pureed, unsalted sunflower kennels. You can then gradually reduce the amount of water you're using to moisten the pellets and also reduce the amount of hulled sunflower that you're added to it, and eventually the bird will be eating mostly the formulated food with the fruits and vegetables.

5. USE THE COPY CAT APPROACH

Coax your parrot into tasting the new food by pretending to eat the pellets in front of it. If you have instilled a flock mentality in your bird, and it feels it's a part of your social network, then it will be motivated to sample what every your are eating.

6. MONITOR FOOD INTAKE WEIGHT AND DROPPINGS

During the dietary process, keep close tabs on your parrot's physical condition. You must be a careful observer to determine whether or not the bird is taking in the new food, because if the percentage of a food the bird is not really eating is increased, it can lead to starvation.

Large parrots can go a couple of days without consuming much food. But small birds can become hypoglycemic and die in as little as 36 hours, so good judgement is a premium.

Monitor your parrot's weight on a daily basis. Before you start the new diet, fill the muscle on both sides of your bird's keel bone (which runs right down the middle of it's chest) so that you know how much "padding' is normal. Then, periodically check this part of your bird's body once you're switched it over to the new food to make sure it is not losing weight.

Make sure your parrot is passing feces of adequate volume and consistency in its droppings. The dropping number should indicate how much food is being consumed. A normal parakeet, for example, should have greater than 30 – 40 droppings daily.; A decrease in the usual number during dietary conversion could mean potential problems.

If your parrot's droppings change appearance, it could indicate a lack of adequate food intake. Droppings that are flat or with little fecal portion are indicative of lack of eating.; However, some color change in the droppings may be normal. The droppings of much bird's changes from green to brown once they start eating pellets.

7. DON'T CHANGE YOUR PARROT'S DIET OVERNIGHT

Try not to be in too much of a hurry to turn your parrot into a perfect eater. Introducing new foods into the diet can frighten a bird away from them, as birds are instinctively cautious creatures. They may not recognize the new item as a food source, and refuse to eat.

You may need to give your parrot a few days to figure out that the pellets you put in its bowl are actually food. Realize that it could take weeks or even a month or more, before your bird is completely switched over to pelleted foods.

People fail to recognize that the bad eating patterns of a bird may have developed over 5, 10 or 15 years, and so you can't expect that bird to instantly convert over to a healthy diet.

During the first week or two of the conversion process, your parrot may just nibble on its formulated diet during the day and then totally chow down on seeds during the hour or so in the evening when you put seeds in the cage. But if your bird is at least tasting the pellets during the daytime, that's still process in the right direction. Gradually, our bird will begin sampling the pellets more and more during the daytime hours.

Remind yourself that the change you're making is going to be fore the rest of your parrot's life, so it's not something that has to be done overnight. Take your time, and be patient with the conversion process. Just keep gently pushing the parrot toward the right direction, and eventually it will change over. Birds can be stubborn, but if given a fair chance. most of them can learn to eat – and enjoy – a health diet.

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