Tony Silva NEWS: How should we feed our parrots? Are pellets all what they need? PART I

Tony Silva NEWS

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When I was a child, I was often told: You are what you eat. I hated vegetables and meat and favored, like every kid, sweets, cakes, pies and ice cream. We were always given a dessert but had to finish the food placed in front of us first.

When I started keeping birds, information on diet was very deficient. A sunflower or safflower seed based diet supplemented with a bit of apple, endive and maybe a piece of carrot was deemed adequate. Fast-forward 40 years and our understanding of diet for cage birds has evolved considerably. Today we truly understand that to own a healthy parrot the cornerstone is a good, balanced diet.

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A Rainbow lorikeet feeding on nectar. (c) Lubomir Tomiska

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For the importance of diet to be understood, we must look at parrots in the wild, where these birds feed on a vast variety of foods. In a study that I conducted in Argentina, Paraguay and southern Brazil between 1985 and 1989, I recorded over 59 items that were consumed by Maximilian Parrots Pionus maximiliani, 61 items that were eaten by Yellow-winged Amazons Amazona aestiva and 17 items eaten by Sharp-tailed Conures Thectocercus acuticaudatus, the latter only casually observed and not the focus of the research. The items selected contained the highest amount of fat when the birds were nesting, but otherwise tended to be eaten as they became available and then until the supply was exhausted, when another item was targeted. The list of foods item is not inclusive and over the years I have added many more. I have realized that bark plays an important role in detoxifying the birds, which as you will read later on feed on many items that contain toxins. If a generalization can be made in terms of diet it is that the birds never feed on just one item, but rather feed predominately on one and complemented their intake with the others. They are, if I can generalize, balancing their diet.

In my fieldwork, I have found that the parrots consume shoots, leaves, bark, buds, flowers, seedpods, fruit and seeds, occasionally a source of protein (lizards or even nestling passerine birds) and once the fresh droppings of Howler Monkeys.I have also seen parrots excavate grubs from rotting branches and feed on the carcasses of dead animals (namely penguins) and the hides of cattle sprayed over a rack for drying.

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My research in the wild has confirmed that different species feed on different items that only they target. Green-winged Macaws Ara chloropterus, for example, feed on hard palm seeds while the Scarlet Macaws Ara macao feed on the drupes of palms that are softer shelled, this because the biting strength of the Scarlet seems incapable of cracking the hardest nuts. This selection of different palm seeds allows both species to occupy the same habitat and not compete with each other for the same food resource.

In the wild, some foods may be available for much of the year but will be eaten only at a certain stage of development or at a specific time of the year, such as when the young are about to fledge, or only if other food resources become scarce.

Some of the foods eaten by parrots, when tasted, are very unpalatable. Copey Clusia sp. produces a flower that leads to a fruit, which is a favorite of many Purrhura conures and the Touit parrotlets. When I tasted it, I could not understand the fascination and attraction that parrots find in the astringent fruit. This plant is widely grown in Florida as an ornamental. Whenever my birds see me with a handful, the excitement becomes noticeable. What they find appealing is beyond my imagination. The same applies to Hog plums Spondias mombim, which the birds adore when green. During the short season it is available, I feed it to the birds. They quickly consume the bitter flesh and then spend hours manipulating the seed in their mouth. This plant is an important food resource for many wild parrots, which like my birds prefer it green and not when it is yellow or orange, flavorful, sweet and ripe.

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A Vernal hanging parrot feeding on Guava Tree. (c) Vipin Baliga. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en).

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To deter predation, plants concentrate toxic compounds in unripe seeds, fruits, flowers and pods. These alkaloids seem no obstacle to parrots, which readily eat these; the parrots cannot wait for the seeds, pods or fruits to ripen, as they then compete with monkeys, fruit eating bats and other mammals and with frugiverous birds for the same resource. The parrots nullify the toxic alkaloids by consuming clay or bark or even certain bromeliad flowers. How the parrots learned to consume these elements to bind with the toxins so they can be excreted is one of nature’s mysteries. (As anaside, the green seeds often sprout and research conducted by Pepe Tella and his group is showing that where parrots disappear, the forest diversity begins to wane.)

So interesting, complex and vast is the subject of wild parrot diets that an entire book could be devoted to the subject. For the sake of brevity, the information can be summarized as follows: parrots eat tremendous variety of foods, they are opportunistic (eating what is available) but may avoid certain foods at certain times, and the dietary needs of different species varies with the season or breeding stage, suggesting that in captivity no single diet should be used across the board for all parrots all of the time.

So how can findings from studies in the wild be extrapolated to the diet of captive parrots?

I will relate my opinion based on more than 40 years as an aviculturist and after having done considerable fieldwork in every continent where parrots are found. My information is light years away from being complete but it is providing some clarity as to the needs of parrots.

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Today pelleted or extruded diets are very popular. Many manufacturers of these composed diets suggest that their product is complete and should form as much as 90% of the diet. They suggest that if you feed other items, the nutritional balance in the compounded food will be compromised. Data suggests that the birds can survive on pellets and water. This diet is certainly far better than one composed of fatty, deficient seed mixes. But is the pelleted diet truly ideal for long term physical and mental health? Since most parrots are long lived, we simply do not know how pelleted feeds will affect their long-term health and through multiple generations.

There is also the psychological component of feeding a sole item. Watch any wild parrot and you will quickly learn that they truly explore their environment for edible foods and that they often spend considerable time extracting an edible morsel. The Glossy Cockatoo Calytorhynchus lathami uses a heavy, bulbous bill to extract diminutive seeds about the size of a pinhead from an Australian pine cone. Palm Cockatoos Probosciger aterrimus visit many Pandanus trees to feed, even though they could easily satiate their appetite in a single location.

Wild parrots spend hours looking for their meal and then feeding. Pellets can be swallowed without any manipulation. They erode a natural behavior of finding the food, exploring the food item with the tongue, rotating it in the foot and removing whatever piece can be eaten.

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Australian King Parrot feeding on the seeds of Coastal Wattle (Acacia longifolia). (c) Doug Beckers. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en).

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My second concern about an all pelleted diet is that they have almost invariably been manufactured from nutritional studies based on poultry. But parrots are very different from poultry, which have been bred for a condensed existence—a couple of months for broilers and about two years for egg layers. Parrots are longer lived, grow slower, are altricial and primarily arboreal—all the opposite of poultry.

Based on the above, I do not believe that pellets should form the sole diet, but rather comprise no more than 60% of the daily intake. The pellets should be sized for the species to avoid waste. The birds should be fed maintenance pellets which are lower in protein if they are pets; only birds in a breeding situation should be offered the higher protein pellets.

If pellets are not the optimum food, are seed diets better. The answer is also a resounding “no!”. A diet composed of sunflower, safflower, an occasional nut and apple or other fruit or one or two types of vegetables is terribly inadequate for sustaining a bird healthy long term. Some may argue that parrots have survived and been bred to multiple generations on this diet and I cannot argue with that point. During the 1800s it was believed parrots did not need water. Some survived a long period of time, but that deprivation was not healthy. I feel similarly about a diet of seeds with only an occasional piece of fruit or vegetable. This diet will eventually lead to deficiencies, malnutrition and without doubt serious illness, which may explain the reduced lifespan of parrots which have (and whose ancestors fed only) on seeds. Pellets are a better option to a predominately seed diet, but BOTH pellets and seeds require that the diet be broadened significantly.

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Mixed seed diets can overcome some of the deficiencies seen in only a single seed diet, but the problem is that many of the smaller seeds will work their way to the bottom of the food bowl, where the birds ignore them. In such cases, the birds will eat only the seeds at the top. Offering vitamin-coated seeds is in my opinion worthless, as the parrots shell the seeds; they do not eat the husk. Their mouths are dry. The vitamins thus do not get ingested.

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Read also the second part of this article:

Tony Silva NEWS: All about the parrot diet. PART II

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Title photo: Feeding parrots in Kuranda Birdworld. (c) Lubomir Tomiska

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