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Parrot Seed
Parrot seed is a great source of nutrition. They are made naturally specially for parrots so that the ingredients are not made harmful in any way. Parrot seed is generally offered by the pet owners as they believe it is a healthy food, which is high in nutrition.
The tradition of feeding the seed-only diets to pet parrots started years ago. The wild birds used to be first caught and imported to USA. Mainly seed diets were preferred due to a profound lack of information and knowledge about the nutritional requirements of birds at that time. Also, people were not aware as to what the seeds actually comprise of.
Good and proper nutrition is vitally important for the long term health and well-being of your parrot. Birds need to eat food items that will offer them with a proper amount of vitamins and minerals required to stay healthy.
If you select a seed diet as a main item in your parrot's diet, you should make it sure that the seed mixture is of best quality. You should make sure that apart from seeds, there is a large variety of ingredients in the mixture, including a variety of seeds, safflower and linseed and a minimum amount of sunflower seeds.
Some of the seed mixtures available in the market contain pre-husked sunflower seeds. They are much better as they prevent the bird from becoming an addicted freak of seeds. A good quality seed mix will also contain other ingredients such as, oats, rice, fortified sticks and a variety of dried fruits and vegetables.
You should use a high quality of pre-packaged seed well mixed with a good variety of different variety of seeds. Some seed mixtures are even beefed up with vitamins. You should not generally opt to buy loose seed in bulk amounts. There are chances for it to be stale and the vitamin content of seeds to decrease with age. Hence in this way, you will be feeding your birds with deficient and fatty seed mixture.
The general seed mixtures of parrot food usually comprise of simple old sunflower seeds that are rich in fat. It is said that you should stay away from such seeds. The costly seed mixes contain a large diversity of seeds that are normally nutritious and very advantageous for your parrot.
You should limit the seeds and nuts or parrot seed mixture in your parrot’s diet to 30% of the total intake. For the other ingredients of the diet, you should include: 20% vegetables and fruits and 30% rice, grains and legumes mixture. You can alternate dairy products for some of the legumes and pelleted psittacine for some rice and grain mixture.
Remember to provide your parrot ample time to adjust to a new diet. Give your bird seeds, only at the meal time and other foods till you are sure that your bird is having good quantity of the new foods to assert itself. You should give food with seed to your parrot at regular intervals, about two or three times per day.