How to Prepare Healthy Foods for Your Pet Cockatiel

Having a pet cockatiel can be a lot of fun! Like all pets, they have needs, one of which is to maintain a healthy diet. One way you can do this is to feed your bird healthy treats throughout the week. Here is how!

Supplies

small food bowl
fruits/veggies
regular food they normally eat

Step 1: Research Foods

Cockatiels can eat a lot of different foods. This can make it fun to pick out different combinations of what you want to give them that week. Before you go and buy anything though you should do research to figure out what foods are safe for your pet to enjoy. Each pet will have different favorites, you will have to experiment and give your cockatiel some options to learn about their preferences.

Some foods that your cockatiel can eat:

Strawberries
Grapes
Bananas
Broccoli
Lettuce
Spinach
Sweet potatoes

Some foods that your cockatiel can't eat:

Avocado
Chocolate
Onions
Garlic
Alcohol
Mushrooms
High-Fat
High-Sodium
High-Sugar

Cockatiels should have dark leafy greens every other day and fruit once a week.

Step 2: Make a List

Once you are sure you know which foods are good and bad, you can pick out two or three different foods you want to feed your bird.

Keep in mind that your bird is small and that they probably won't eat a whole pack of strawberries or a whole banana. You need to make sure you are cutting the food up into small pieces so that your bird can enjoy them. In the picture above I have "bird-sized" pieces compared to a dime for reference.

This means you should try to get foods that you enjoy eating too so that you aren't wasteful of the food you don't feed your bird.

Step 3: Go to Grocery

Once you make a list, you are ready to go get your food from the store. Again, keep in mind your bird is small, so unless you plan on eating the food too make sure you get the smaller portion sizes.

Step 4: Food Prep

Once you get the food, cut what you want to serve into bird-sized pieces. Above I have a picture of what size bowl you would want compared to a chef's knife. I also included a picture of how much food I would use to put into the bowl. Here I only use one stem of lettuce and two medium strawberries.

You can put them into a food bowl with some seeds from their regular food, or just have a mixture of the fruit or leafy greens. When you are satisfied you can put it in the fridge to keep fresh until you are ready to serve it.

Step 5: Serve the Food and Let Your Bird Enjoy!

When you're ready to serve you can put the food bowl at the bottom of the cage, or you can attempt to hold the bowl up to the bird to see if they will eat it that way. If they seem uninterested when you hold the food up to them, put it back at the bottom of the cage, or put it back in the fridge to try again later.

Birb + Food = Happy Birb :D