#ohmoo

The occasional fruit and vegetable shouldn’t be occasional, it should be a highly varied amount of fresh vegetables on a daily basis! Since cockatiels are dominantly ground foragers their diet mainly consists of seeds, grasses, leaves, and sprouts in the wild with some fruits from time to time.  By not providing them with a great variety of vegetables/ sprouts daily you would be leaving them nutrient deficient!  With cockatiels they can be fed seed but it is best to be made of organic seeds from your local grocery store as most seed bags will be low quality seeds and potentially filled with dust from factories, human-grade seeds have higher health standards and as a result tend to be much healthier.  “Cockatiel” seed mixes are commonly filled with high-fat seeds such as sunflower or safflower which usually causes these birds to become overweight and develop liver diseases as well so if you do go with a store bought seed mix it’s best to find one that isn’t as high in fat.  Pellets are much better nutrition for a parrot, they provide the essential nutrients they need as well as fulfilling nutrient requirements of things that are commonly lacking in an avian diet.  Pellets are usually lower in fat which is a major plus for captive birds since most of them will not be provided with enough exercise (compare running around or flying in a house to flying for miles on end in the wild to burn off fat).

here’s a food pyramid to take a look at!