Ask Lafeber

Diet for my kakariki

Hi! I hope you’re well. I have a few questions regarding providing my bird with the best and most nutritional diet possible. He is 2 and a half years old, and has been on a seed diet most his life with daily fresh fruits and vegetables. Recently, I have tried to convert him to Harrison’s pellet. For some reason he finds it a little difficult biting into the pellets and when I add water, it becomes too mushy for him. Even though I know he loves the taste, he can’t eat enough of it so I am still trying to convert him from seeds. I am really interested in trying lafeber with him but I am just a little unsure about how I would go about feeding him this? Would the lafeber completely replace the seed in his diet and would they provide the same nutrition as Harrison’s would? And if you could also recommend the best vegetables to feed him, along side a specific lafeber food packet, then that would be great. I have tried lafeber with him and he really enjoys it. I just want to give him a balanced diet that will help his overall health and well-being. Thank you so much in advance!

Hi Aisha,

All of our foraging diets are nutritionally balanced the same as a pellet, but they are not ground up. And of course we also have pellets. If your Kakariki loves the Nutri-Berries, for example, yes, these can be fed instead of pellets, and he will be getting the same nutrition as eating pellets. Any of our foraging diets can be fed instead of or along with pellets. He would not need any additional loose seeds. He should have the foraging diets and/or pellets as 80% of his daily diet, and the rest can be made up of greens, veggies, fruits and healthy table foods. The fresh foods can vary by season, and even if he doesn’t eat them, he gets the nutrition he needs from the Nutri-Berries, Avi-Cakes, etc. Since Kakis are a ground parakeet, they do eat a lot of seeds in the wild, so the whole seeds in our foraging diets are more natural for him than just pellets.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda