Providing the correct bird food for your bird is critical to its health. Here's all you need to know about bird food.
Variety is the spice of life
Using a variety of bird food to create your bird's diet is a key component to keeping your bird healthy. Just like you wouldn't eat bananas for every meal every day, you don't want to feed your bird the same food every day.
So, how do we create a good variety of food? Well, a good way to mix up bird food is to combine pellets, seeds, veggies, grains and proteins in a little dish. Proteins can include beans and corn and help your bird with digestion.
Birds getvitamins and minerals from fruits and vegetables, so these are an important aspect of your bird's diet. Birds need and like seed, but only about 50 percent of their bird food should be comprised of seed.
You can also get a little bit creative with your bird food. Birds that live in the wild create their own, varied diets and they go well beyond bird seeds. In the wild, birds find bird food such as berries and nuts. As crazy as it sounds, some birds even eat little pieces of meat and diary products. If you're going to introduce your bird to bird food like dairy, introduce it very slowly and see how your bird reacts. You want to use its food as a nutritional supplement, not as a determent to its health.
Be choosey about what you feed your bird
Giving a bird too many seeds is like giving a dog table scrapes. Once they get a taste for it, they always come back for more. Just like you don't feed a dog table scraps for every meal, you shouldn't feed a bird seed for every meal because it's not as healthy as other choices. Seeds are a bird food that should be used sparingly.
Seeds as bird food can be high in fat, which can throw off the nutritional balance in your bird's diet.
Don't forget the water
Birds are big eaters and they need a lot of bird food, but they simply will not survive if they don't have a consistent, clean water source. Birds have very sensitive immune systems and will get ill if they don't have clean water.
Some birds don't drink a whole lot of water. If that's the case with your bird, you can get a dietary supplement to place on its bird food. Placing a supplement powder on bird food helps the bird get vitamins it might otherwise deprive itself of.
