Hi Rahima,
I definitely urge you to change your bird’s diet. He is eating too much sugar in the form of carbs and fruit sugar. If he continues, he is at a high risk to develop diabetes, which is hard to manage with birds.
I consider “chop” as the current pet bird diet trend. As with human diets, there are always new theories on bird diets and plenty of “experts” to push the new trends. Our Vets and nutrition experts have discussed this in our nutrition webinars and in Q&A during other webinars. The true experts all agree on one thing – at least 80% of your bird’s diet should consist of a commercially made, nutritionally balanced diet based on science. This means pellets or a diet like our foraging diets – Nutri-Berries, Avi-Cakes and Pellet-Berries. These foraging diets are balanced the same as a pellet, but they are not ground up. They can be fed alone or combined with pellets. The need for the foraging diets is for mental and physical stimulation because pellets alone can be boring and they offer no natural foraging exercise.
I realize there is a trend to not feed anything “commercial”. But all that word means is that it was manufactured by a company. Many of the companies that produce pet bird foods are small companies. Lafeber Company is a family owned and operated business, founded by a Veterinarian and now run by his son, who is also a Vet. Our products are made in the USA with ingredients sourced in the USA. We make our food in small batches.
Feeding a loose seed diet is not going to provide your bird with the nutrition he needs. The seeds are not fresh enough to retain their nutrients, and any added vitamins are lost when the bird removes the hull. A great alternative is our foraging diets that I mentioned above. These foods contain whole seeds with the hulls removed, along with other ingredients to make them a nutritionally balanced diet. Seed addicts will readily convert to them, especially if you begin by crumbling them.
As to the fresh foods – these are great to offer and ideally your bird will eat them. But the amount of fruit you are offering is too much. It’s actually unusual for a cockatiel to even eat fruit, but yours has clearly developed a sweet tooth. LOL A very small amount of fruit a couple of times a week is all he should have. The same goes with the carbs. A pasta made with veggies is a good alternative. Sweet potatoes or yams should be offered instead of white potatoes. And brown rice is a good food, and better than white rice. But again all of these should be fed in moderation. Fresh foods & table foods combined should only make up about 20% of the daily diet. A pet bird is not going to get the daily nutritional support he needs from a main diet of fresh foods & carbs. This is because the nutrients in fresh foods can vary greatly depending on how and where it was grown, and how and when it was harvested. We now know that other than eating directly out of your own garden, most frozen vegetables have more nutrients than the fresh veggies you buy at the grocery store.
It can take tough love to get your bird on a healthier diet. Our May 14th webinar presented by Dr. Lamb will focus on the picky parrot and she plans to discuss and demonstrate tips to getting your picky bird to eat better. I hope to see you there! 🙂
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
