Where do Parrots Get Their Food?

Video Transcript

"My name is Madeline Franco and I am here to talk about birds, specifically about parrots and more specifically in this segment about where parrots get their food. Well if you are talking about my parrots they get their food from me but if you are talking about parrots in the wild generally a lot of them are seed eaters, fruit eaters, the ones that are in the tropics of course have a wide variety a virtual smorgisbord available to them. Molokins like coconut. They like particularly young coconut. They are the big, the Molokin is the large peach colored parrot that is native to the islands of Molokas. They are somewhat endangered or highly endangered actually. But they do like coconut. They do like fruits and vegetables. They do like nuts. Some of the South American birds and many of the birds will eat palm nuts. There seems to be something in the palm nut as far as their immune system but when we have them living among us we like to feed them a pelleted diet which has been researched heavily and formulated to balance their diet. Also we like to give them fruits and vegetables, rice, beans, got to go easy on the soybeans though because they do contain a fair amount of protein and that could cause some stress to your bird's system and we just try to give them as balanced diet as much as we can, trying to replicate as much as we can what they can get in the wild. A lot of people like to feed their birds and the birds do really love it, they like to feed them pomegranates which are a very good antioxidant but just be aware that if you feed them something like that that is somewhat colorful and messy you may have to redecorate. You probably want to exercise caution or put that in an area where you can definitely do some cleaning afterwards. Wear a raincoat if you are going to feed pomegranate, that would be my advice. They really do get into their food. Parrots will very often pick at something if they have access to bananas and things like that. What I'll do is I'll give them little pieces of fruit because they will tend to waist a lot if give them an entire apple they may just take one or two bites. One of the great things about corn on the cob I like to give my birds sometimes every once in a while I will give them a cob of corn with the leaves still on it and have them open the corn and therefore it becomes a foraging item and also a toy so use your imagination when feeding your birds. Remember they need a balanced diet like you do and you'll have a lot of fun discovering new things that they like to eat. Again go easy on nuts of all kinds. Many of the larger birds some of the Macaws, the Hyacinths can have a diet consisting primarily of nuts but for the other birds you want to limit their intake of nuts."