Feeding your Cockatiel Vegetables

Fresh vegetables should make up the bulk of any psittacine diet and making sure that they do can help ensure that your bird is getting all the vitamins and nutrients essential to maintain good health. Freshly picked veggies that are raw or steamed generally provide the most nutrition for pet birds. Don’t leave cooked vegetable in your bird’s cage for more than two hours because of the potential for bacteria.

Fresh vegetables should be washed and cleaned to remove pesticides, and served finely chopped. Vegetables including vegetable greens and roots should be hung off the cage to provide chewing foraging opportunities.

Safe Vetetables

• Artichokes
• Asparagus
• Beans (wax) Green & yellow
• Beetroot including leaves
• Bok Choy
• Broccoli
• Brussels Sprouts
• Cabbage red is better
• Chillies
• Carrots & leaves
• Celery & leaves
• Capsicum(peppers)
• Choko
• Corn
• Chard
• Cauliflower
• Collard greens
• Cucumbers
• Egg plant (ripe and cooked)
• Endives
• Fennel
• Garlic
• Jicama
• Kale
• lettuces dark green
• Mustard greens
• Ochra
• Onion (in moderation)
• Pak Choy
• Peas & pods
• Parsnip
• Pumpkin - Seed
• Radish & leaves - Sprouts
• Radicchio
• Rocket
• Spinach (in moderation)
• Sweet potatoes (raw) - Sweet potatoes (cooked)
• Silver beet
• Snow/sugar snap peas
• Tomato (fruit only)
• Turnip greens only
• Tofu
• Watercress
• Yams (sweet potato) (cooked or raw)
• Yellow squash
• Zucchini

Please note that chards, Turnip greens, beet greens, spinach are all high in oxalate's which block calcium absorption so serve in moderation. High oxlate foods to be avoided.

Cucumber contains small patches that taste bitter. These portions contain the extremely toxic tetracyclic triterpenoids or cucurbitacins compound. Excessive consumption of this compound can cause death. Several bioactive compounds have been isolated from cucumber including cucurbitacins, cucumegastigmanes I and II, cucumerin A and B, vitexin, orientin, isoscoparin 2″-O-(6‴-(E)-p-coumaroyl) glucoside, apigenin 7-O-(6″-O-p-coumaroylglucoside) etc. Despite huge exploitation of cucumber in agricultural field, comparatively very few studies have been published about its chemical profile. Before feeding these plants taste them do not feed bitter tasting cucumber. Reference

Onions contain thiosulphate that destroys red blood cells. When excessive amounts of onion or garlic is fed to chickens, it can cause hemolytic anemia, aka: Heinz anemia, a blood condition resulting in chickens with weak legs, listlessness and a disheveled appearance.