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The Proper Parrot Diet Introduction |
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Every bird lover should be concerned about feeding their parrot properly. After all, the bird can’t tell you if they don’t feel well. If you know you are feeding all the nutrients your parrot needs, then your bird will likely live a long, healthy life.
When parrots first came to the New World as pets, no one knew anything about them. Everything we know today was learned through trial-and-error, or more recently through scientific research. People brought parrots into their homes as a novelty and kept them in cages much too small, sometimes in homes much too cold and drafty. The birds were fed only seed. And in a few years, the birds died. This led people to believe that parrots were not long-lived creatures. Today we know how wrong they were.
Nothing breaks my heart as much as hearing someone say, “But I’ve only fed him seeds and he’s doing just fine”. The person saying this may in fact believe they are correct. But we know today that they are slowly feeding their bird to death. Or more correctly, they are starving their bird to death.
Parrots eat a wide variety of foods in the wild and seem to have, to some degree, an instinct to tell them what they need to eat. In captivity, this instinct is somewhat suppressed and parrots will sometimes eat too much of things which aren’t good for them, if allowed. This is the natural evolution of captive bred parrots.
Stay tuned for our "The Proper Parrot Diet - Don't Feed Your Bird To Death!" series we'll be publishing over the next few weeks!
Part 2 of this series on proper parrot diet is now online.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 02 January 2007 )
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Bird Care