Food and treats for a Yellow-Crowned Amazon

[elioncho]

Hi guys,

I have a Yellow-Crowed parrot and was wondering, apart from fruits, rice and vegetables, what packaged food do you recommend for my parrot that I can buy online? What kind of treats should I try for the training process?

Thanks

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum! Now, without knowing what the bird eats on a daily basis, we can't really say what you should use as treats. Let me explain. Any high value item, which is always a protein food, can be used as a training reward BUT, because amazons are HIGHLY prone to fatty liver disease and require a diet that is low in protein (except for breeding season when you should, of course, increase protein to a moderate level), you need to be careful with any extra protein intake. So, tell us, what does your bird eat on a daily basis and is this food free-fed or given at its appropriate time and in the right portion?

Also, you need to be careful with rice because the one grown in USA is high in arsenic BUT the red and black rice from Lundberg and the brown Basmati grown in India or Thailand are OK - the only thing is that rice is really not very nutritious so, although it's OK for parrots, it needs to be 'doctored' with more nutritious grains and veggies.

[elioncho]

Hi,

Thanks for your quick response. The parrot right now eats at the same time as we humans. Usually, for breakfast, it is having bread soaked in milk. For lunch, it usually eats rice with a protein such as chicken. Other times it can be fruit such as mango. For dinner, is the same as lunch. I am not doing any exact portioning right now.

You mentioned veggies and grains. Which veggies and grains should I give to it?

Thanks,

[Pajarita]

OUCH! That's a VERY unhealthy diet for an amazon! Is this a baby or an adult? Parrots are not mammals so nature never gave them the necessary enzymes to digest milk (so, the bread and milk? out the window!). Also, amazons are not only stricly herbivore, animal protein (meat, milk, eggs, cheese, etc) is nothing but slow poison to them because it's high in protein (no good), high in fat (no good) and it has bad cholesterol. Amazons natural diets do not contain any bad cholesterol because they only eat plant material so (again, evolution at work) nature never gave their bodies the mechanism to get rid of it and, when the body doesn't know what to do with something that it cannot get rid of, it stores it. In the case of bad cholesterol, it starst by storing it in the liver (which causes fatty liver disease) but it also goes into their veins and arteries (causing strokes and heart attacks) and even in their eyes (they develop a 'white blob' that covers their pupils impairing their sight). After this, they die.

Amazons need to eat a breakfast of chop, mash or gloop for breakfast accompanied by raw produce (I recommend one fruit, one veggie and one leafy green - a different one each day of the week as rule of thumb but, for items that are too high in 'bad' things like oxalic acid, even more seldom than that). Also, they are not to be fed anything that is high in iron (so no human food because human food is too high in iron for them and no spinach). And dinner should be a low protein seed mix (cockatiel is good as long as it doesn't have any black oil or too many sunflower seeds). They also eat at their own schedule and not a human one (these are not domesticated animals so you need to follow the same schedule the birds in the wild follow). Breakfast is at dawn and dinner is at dusk (and you need, of course, to keep it at a strict solar schedule with full exposure to both twilight periods or their endocrine system starts to malfunction).

Now, as to what veggies and fruits... well, mine eat a large variety of everything but I don't feed them avocado, spinach, collard greens, parsley or cilantro and VERY little beans. Mine get apples, oranges, bananas, cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew, blueberries, blackberries, starfruit, grapes, kiwis, peaches, strawberries, nectarines, pears, pomegranate, carrots, sweet potatoes, all kinds of squashes and pumpkins, peppers (both the sweet and the spicy), green beans, sugar snaps, snow peas, yucca, corn on the cob, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce (I don't feed the iceberg), Swiss chard, watercress, kale (but not too often), all the cabbages, escarole, chicory, etc.