Your bird should be offered fresh fruits and vegetables on a daily basis!! Items to be Avoided We like sharing people food with our birds on a regular basis. Be careful of giving them foods high in sugar and salt, as they cannot process them in the same way we do. Here is a list of potential trouble foods we have come across. Just say no to: Raw onions, alcohol, avocado, milk (small amounts of yogurt and cheese ok), chocolate. Seeds from the following fruits: apples, any pit fruit (cherries, plums, peaches, etc. Seeds from other fruits may be ok (our birds LOVE bell pepper seeds). Other things to avoid: Nicotine/tobacco, corrugated cardboard (no way to tell if glue is nontoxic), zinc Newspaper is ok to give to your birds, as the ink is nontoxic. Old phone books are fun, too (except maybe for the clean up). some people food our birds love orange juice, cooked or raw pasta (nothing like the sound of four birds quietly munching on spaghetti noodles), yogurt, otter pops (relatively low in sugar), cooked oatmeal (before we add the sugar), brown rice, cooked beans (including refried beans), cheerios, kashi cereal Parrot Corn Bread Recipe (recipe easily halves) 4 cups flour (wheat) 4 cups corn meal (yellow) 4Tb baking powder 1/2 cup vegetable oil 6 eggs AND shells 4 cups apple juice 4 cups frozen mixed veggies (carrots, peas, corn, green beans, limas) Mix all ingredients together. Put in two 9 x 13 baking pans. Bake at 375 degrees for approximately 45 minutes or until golden brown. Cool, cut in pieces, place in ziplocs and freeze (each bag should contain a one week supply). Variations: The above recipe was provided by our bird breeder, who uses this recipe with when weaning her birds. The recipe is given to the birds at night, when they don't have access to other soft foods. We have used the following variations to create "treat muffins" for our adult birds. We have four medium birds, and each bird gets 1/2 to 1/4 of a muffin as their night-night snack (they will climb into their cages for them!) 1. Replace one cup of the flour and one cup of the corn meal with ground nuts (our local Trader Joe's sells ground almonds). 2. Add one cup of sunflower seeds to batter. 3. Use only two cups of veggies. Substitute one mashed banana and one smaller diced apple for the other two cups. 4. Divide into 48 muffin cups and bake for 25 min in a nonpreheated oven. FOOD AND RECIPE LINKS http://www.parrotparrot.com/birdhealth/recipes.htm Really Wild Bird Food at Hampshire Farmers' Markets
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