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Vitamin Sources
Vitamins are not only important in your diet but also in your parrot’s diet. Vitamins can make for a balanced diet for the bird and a necessary ingredient.
Vitamin A
Vegetables with Vitamin A are one of the most important foods that you can provide your parrot to eat. There are enough vegetables that have a high vitamin A content that the bird can get what it requires and blush the rest.
There are fruits also that are high in vitamin A but fruits are not usually a good source as vegetables for the crucial nutrient. Vitamin A is important for eyesight, skin and feather condition and helps your parrot to fight infection by making it’s the mucous membranes healthy.
You might not know that the man made Vitamin A capsules have all the chemical nutrients that your parrot needs. But the vitamin that the fresh foods contain can be used by the body of your parrot and the unwanted vitamins are flushed out. But with man-made Vitamin A capsules, the bird can not help but keep the extra Vitamin A in its body, which gets stored in the liver.
The following are good sources of Vitamin A—Green Vegetables, such as, alfalfa, beet greens, Collard greens, chard, chicory, mustard greens, turnip greens, kale, spinach, broccoli, dandelion greens, water cress, parsley, green peppers and hot peppers. Yellow-orange vegetables, such as, sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, butternut squash, hubbard squash, acorn squash, hot peppers, red peppers and pumpkin. Fruits with decent Vitamin A, such as, peaches, nectarines, apricots, Japanese persimmon, cantaloupe, raw plantain, papaya, sour red cherry.
Vitamin A is also available from eggs, meat, and many kinds of cheeses in different varieties of retinol. It is important to note here that fresh and raw food is for both humans and parrots. Cooked food or frozen food can destroy some or nearly all of the vitamins, minerals and enzymes. Parrot is wild bird and never consumes cooked food. If you are a hard veggie you can give your bird raw carrots, sweet potato and gourd squashes.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D, one of the fat soluble vitamins, gets stored in the liver. There are different sources of vitamin D for your parrot, such as, sunlight, egg-yolks, fish liver oil and dark leafy greens. It is important to note here that you should take caution while feeding your bird with Vitamin D as it is potentially the most toxic vitamin.
Vitamin D functions in the making of calcium and helps for the making of bone formation. When it becomes low, the blood levels of calcium and phosphorus reduce; the minerals are brought away from the bones.
Vitamin E
Vitamin E plays a vital role to maintain the bodily functions and fertility of your parrot. It boosts the bird’s whole metabolism with carbohydrate, fatty, protein, mineral and water metabolic processes. It provides your parrot protection against the defects in bone structure and also against kidney and liver trouble. You can give your bird Vitamin either naturally, in powder or in tablets.