Parakeet food is quite simple. In addition to food, they can eat some foods familiar to humans, such as fruit or chicken eggs.
Providing your pet parakeet (likewise referred to as a budgerigar) a variety of food choices will help support a pleased, healthy bird.
Commercial foods can be supplemented with a range of other foods to develop a balanced parakeet diet. A balanced diet is most likely to help your budgie live a longer, healthier life.
List of Foods You Can Feed Your Parakeets
The question of feeding is one of the most important for the owner. After all, parakeets’ nutrition is the basis of its health and longevity, so it is necessary to approach this problem with full responsibility.
Seeds
Parakeets like to consume seeds. However, the number of seeds you feed your bird ought to be kept to less than 10 percent of the total dietary intake. Feeding bird seed alone is not a balanced diet for your parakeet. Seed diet plans often contain low levels of specific vitamins and minerals he needs to remain healthy. Likewise, high-fat content in seed can result in obesity. Feeding two teaspoons of blended seed each day are the optimum amount recommended.
Parakeet Pellets
Good quality parakeet pellets ought to be the staple food of your bird’s diet. Since parakeets prefer seed food to pellet food, moving them gradually from seeds to pellets might be a tough procedure, potentially taking several weeks to accomplish. Changing to pellets is well worth it for your feathered friend’s health. Pellets can be made into a mash and combined with seed, which makes it more attractive to your parakeet during food transition.
Fruits
Parakeets take pleasure in eating fresh fruit. Feeding a range of fruits every day will help satisfy your bird’s dietary requirements. Some parakeet favorites consist of apples, pears, melon, kiwi, berries, grapes, and oranges. These kinds of fruits can provide your budgie with a nutritional source of vitamins A, C, and K, as well as minerals, like potassium or manganese. Get rid of all leftover fruit after 2 hours to avoid growth of damaging bacteria.
Vegetables
Parakeets can eat any sort of veggies. Green leafy veggie, such as kale, dandelions leaves, romaine lettuce, spinach, and sprouted seeds, supply your parakeet with various minerals and vitamins. Numerous include vitamin A, which is necessary for a healthy parakeet. Your budgie will enjoy other veggies, like carrots, broccoli, beets, asparagus, cabbage, sweet potato, and squash. Likewise, prepared corn and beans can be given. Beans can provide extra protein to your bird.
Other Foods
Calcium is a particularly crucial mineral to parakeets. It assists keep their bones healthy. Offer calcium to your budgie by giving him cuttlebones, hard-boiled eggs squashed with the shells or oyster shell grit. Eggs offer protein too. Parakeets that don’t get enough sunlight may require extra vitamin D to help soak up dietary calcium. Vitamin D can be provided by feeding them less than 1 mL of cod-liver oil blended into 1 kg of food. Parakeets can consume most foods you eat, such as whole wheat toast, cooked pasta, and chicken.
Dangerous Foods for Your Parakeet
Parakeets discover much of the foods in the following list palatable, so do not trust your bird’s judgment when choosing what not to feed!
Citrus fruits such as lemons and limes contain great deals of citric acid, and although not dangerous, they can cause indigestion. Other products in the following list are toxic sufficient to eliminate a Parakeet. Cherry, apricot and peach stones, for example, are potentially deadly, containing cyanide (as do apple and pear pips).
Parakeet beaks are not strong enough to break cherry stones, but it’s always possible that a stone might come pre-cracked. Peach and apricot pits divided quickly too, making the dangerous chemicals offered to the unwitting bird.
In addition to the list below, never ever offer a Parakeet anything that has actually been in your mouth, as human saliva can cause issues for Parakeets’ digestion systems.
So, never ever feed your birds any of the following:
- Potatoes (raw).
- Onion.
- Crackers and other man-made biscuits and snacks
- Salt.
- Sugar.
- Cheese
- Milk or milk items – Parakeets find lactose difficult to digest (some seed blends consist of an absorbable dried milk protein. However, it’s not something you need to replicate).
- Garlic
- Dates
- Passionfruit.
- Nutmeg.
- Sugary foods of all kinds
- Lemon
- Meat, poultry, fish (raw)
- Honey
- Rhubarb
- Kumquat
- Lime
- Apple seeds
- Avocado
- Peanuts (they very rapidly grow a deadly fungus, so best to prevent altogether)
- Tomatoes: red are great, green are toxic
- Pear pips.
- Dairy products
- Beans — numerous raw beans are hazardous for Parakeets, so it’s best to prevent them all
- Fish and seafood
- Aubergine (Eggplant) green parts
- Mushrooms and other fungi
- Chocolate
- Grapefruit.
Feeding Parakeets Meat
In the wild Parakeets periodically eat bugs. Nevertheless, with a good, well-balanced diet in captivity, they do not require meat protein. Some keepers feed cooked chicken or fish in percentages every fortnight or two. However, unless the birds are nesting or molting, they don’t really require it. It must likewise be highlighted that raw meat will make your birds ill.
Feeding Parakeets Wild Bird Seed
The accessibility of inexpensive wild bird food might lure you to explore it as a food supply. Do not! Parakeet seed mixes are formulated for one specific species, the Parakeet, whereas wild bird mixes tend to be mixed for the finch and tit family — the most familiar garden feeder visitors. These birds have different dietary requirements for budgies. There is likewise the danger that the food is of bad quality, especially if it’s very low-cost. You ought to not be feeding such things to any bird, and definitely not to your cherished animals!
Feeding Budgies Bread
Bread, or toast, isn’t something your birds ought to be frequently eating. Prevent any standard shop-bought loaves, as these will include salt which can harm budgies’ kidneys. An organic wholemeal loaf with no added salt is all right, in percentages. There isn’t much nutrition in this foodstuff for budgies, and yet it will rapidly fill their crops and inform their stomachs they’ve had enough. Malnutrition is for that reason a danger if too much bread is fed.
The very same no-salt rule applies to crispbreads. The budgies will take pleasure in nibbling the broken things; however, it ought to be deemed a treat, never a main course.
Never ever mistake your budgerigars for little human beings. They do not require butter, jam, peanut butter, marmite, honey or any other spreadable on their bread. The only time the bread ought to be tampered with is if you are trying to get some liquid medication down them, and feel that lacing the bread will be a great way of making sure the medication is taken.
