Pellets Are Not Complete Nutrition
The flock LOVE eating fresh foods, what nature extended them to eat. They weren’t out on this earth to eat supplemental diets for our convenience. Although pellets have their place within a parrots captive diet by supplementing in dietary needs that we may not be giving them or able to give them, a pelleted diet alone still is not enough for our birds. It’s better than an all seed diet, but still not enough!
Pellets gained popularity by the 1980’s and it all started with mostly breeders using them because they were being marketed as “compete nutrition” and it was a way to get dull, malnourished, lifeless seed eaters onto a better diet without the prep work of feeding fresh foods.
The concern is, pellets are not complete nutrition. We know that now. They are also extremely bland and boring for our birds. In the wild, hookbills (most parrot species we have as companions) are seed eaters. They like to crack open seeds and forage to find them because they fly 10 plus miles a day at least everyday and need those fats to keep them healthy. But in captivity, over 90% of birds don’t fly, and if they do most don’t fly more than a mile a day. Not to mention the seeds we have access to are no where near what they have access to in the wild, which will give them a better balanced diet than we could. Pellets offer no cracking, they offer very little flavor, they get boring.
Offering fresh foods with your pellets, including seeds that are safe for your parrot that come from these foods like pepper seeds, is an excellent way to increase their health and give them verity within their life! You wouldn’t want to eat the same things everyday day in and day out. You want variety and your animals crave it too!
Switching to fresh foods from any diet can be a challenge for some birds, so if you need help, you can contact me! I have diet conversion online consultations available where we can get your bird eating new foods, whether it be pellets from a seed diet or fresh foods from a pellet diet, and get you started on what foods are safe for your parrots and what isn’t!