Feeding Parakeets

Video Transcript

"In this clip we're going to talk about feeding parakeets. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. You want to offer them as I was saying before, human whole grain, and if you can, I like using a mix of pellets, the commercialized pellet that doesn't use any artificial coloring, so this is the pellet, here. And also these are the whole grains. This is oat and spelt. I think there's some oat grits in there as well. I'll also use a whole millet. And I do a mix. So I use a little bit of millet seed and you can use a little bit of human grade, cracked sunflower seed as well, but you want to make sure it doesn't make up more than five percent of the diet. It does have a good source of vitamin E in it, but it's also very high in fat, and these guys are very prone to fatty tumors from getting obese from eating bad diets, and to help keep them a little bit leaner, and a little more active and extend their life, you want to make sure you give them more grain based diet than a seed based diet. So I would say that seeds overall never make up no more than ten percent of their diet, the grains make about twenty percent of their diet, about forty percent of their diet will be a commercial pelleted mix, and the last bit, you want to use greens if you can, so I'll use berries. You can take slices of cucumber and slice them very thin. And use a little like chip clips or something or put them through the bars of the cage and they'll chew at the end. Cucumber, you can use baby greens, you can use artichokes, or broccoli, broccoli flower heads, any small sprouts these guys will pick at. They really do like their greens. They have to be introduced especially getting an older bird that's never eaten any sort of plant matter, they will have to be introduced to it slowly. You can use little bits of apple, tropical fruits. More or less anything that's safe for people is safe to offer your parakeet. You don't want to use avocado. There's just been some studies or some problems with some birds with avocados. So, just to be safe rather than sorry, do stay away from that. No chocolate, no caffeine. But you can also offer little shreds of carrot. Often times, a good way to offer it to this bird is to sometimes you can get a little skewer type device and you can skewer fruits and vegetables onto a metal piece. You can also use the same skewers that are used for shish kabobs and basically shish kabob the fruits and vegetables and put it like a toy in their cage and a lot of times that's a good way to introduce your bird to the foods as well as to offer it outright. These guys, you know their varied eaters. They're omnivores so, lots of green plant matter, bright berries with lots of antioxidants in it, grains of course are going to be a good staple part of their diet. And one of the things I like about some commercial pellet diets. You know exact KT feeders are all brands that I use. Natural ingredients, and also don't use any dyes in the food. They put in some vitamins and minerals that might be lacking in their diet otherwise. So it's a very good supplemental food to offer these guys as well. The only other thing I'll try and do is I'll try and offer these guys different feeding stations, especially if you've got more than one bird, so they don't fight over one food source. They can kind of bully each other. So I have different cups all around the cage. You can use little cups like this that kind of a puzzle. These guys are really smart birds. They'll lift up little lids to try and get to their food inside. So, again, the other thing you might do is multiple feeding stations for these little birds. just food a few little pieces of food in each feeding station so they sort of have a replication of their wild life, so they would go from, instead of sitting in front of a food bowl all day and just getting all their food in one spot, they can then go from food station to food station, doing as they would to in the wild, having to look as if in a tree for different like little bits of food hiding all over their cage, so that's something else you can do as well when presenting food to these birds."