What is your feeding routine?

[Michael]

Describe your daily feeding routine. How much time/effort does it involve? What do you think are the benefits? What do you wish you could change/improve?

[Pomlover2586]

I make Iago a bowl of fresh veggies in the morning- whenever I wake up. It usually takes me about 5 minutes to cut everything up. He gets fresh water and I double check his pellet mix to make sure it's full.

In the evening I pull out the veggie dish, wash it, give him clean water and check pellets again

I think the benefits of this schedule is that it varies daily. Some days he gets fed around 7-8 am and some days he doesn't get fed until 9 or 10. I don't want my birds on a strict schedule because I want them to be flexible and less stressed if routine ever changes significantly. When my baby girl joins the family she will be on the same schedule.

Right now I wouldn't change the way I do things since it seems to work well for both Iago and my family.

[laducockatiel]

I wake up for school at about 6am so Ladu wakes up then as well. I defrost some frozen veggies and put them in his bowl. Then I do his seeds/pellets and water. The after midday, I take his veggies out and I sometimes fill his bowl with treats and make him forage for them (by covering he bowl and poking holes in the paper so he has to rip open the paper to get to the treats).

[marie83]

Mine have a variable feeding routine, not massively variable, just enough so they don't go hungry but aren't screaming the place down at 8am either if breakfast hasn't arrived. If I know breakfast is going to be really late I'll give extra at dinner the night before and leave it in although they usually have 2 meals a day + treats in between.

Most days their food allowence gets split into 3 portions, breakfast, dinner and foraging toys. Anything left in the foraging toys at the end of the day gets put into the evening meal so I can monitor exactly what they have eaten that day.

Everything gets weighed and leftovers are also weighed to get an accurate picture of if they are losing appetite.
I do not cook specially for my birds but they may get a bit of our dinner at the weekend if it is suitable.
I would say breakfast takes 10-15 minutes including prepping 2-3 different fruit and veg, washing sprouted seeds etc, weighing it and hiding pellets/treats in foraging toys. Evening meal takes less time as they only get pellets which have already been weighed out and whatevers left in the toys.


I think the benefits are that it allows my birds to be used to a varying routine so if anything unusual happens they will take it in their stride. They also get the opportunity to forage whilst I can ensure they are not going hungry or getting overfed because they cannot get to it or are getting the treats as extras. The extra inconvenience is worth it as they get so much enjoyment out of it.

If I could improve anything I would feed a totally fresh diet but I know nowhere near enough about parrot nutrition, so pellets as a base diet it is.

[cml]

Stitch and Leroy get food twice everyday, in the morning and in the evening.

We prepare their breakfast just before they go to bed, so its there when they wake up at 11am. They get pellets in the morning, for this reason, since we are at work when they wake up!

In the evening, they get either pellets or fresh food, about every other day its veggies. This seems to work very well! We are about to try to do a schedule over each day's bird related activities, so we know what to do each day and when. We'll see how that works out, but this is the basic routine around our house!

[Wayne361]

2 feedings/day. Pellets in morning. Fresh veggies and some fruit at night. I take time to train every day....do have to include seeds (reward) as well in daily diet. Works for me. I also have reasoned that pellets contain higher energy so it is best to feed in the morning before an active day.

Wayne

[Grey_Moon]

She gets fed outside the cage twice a day.

Depending on what time it is she either gets a) her birdie bread or b) her veggie mash with supplements.

It can take me a few hours on the weekend once a month to make enough food for that month, but then daily all I have to do is thaw whatever I am feeding and warm it up before offering it to her.
Takes maybe five mins.

[Eurycerus]

Twice a day pellets and vegetables. I was feeding raw vegetables but she wasn't the biggest fan. So i steam carrots and sweet potatoes and then refrigerate till it is feeding time. I also give frozen corn that i thaw before giving to her.

I've tried broccoli and cauliflower raw and steamed to no avail as well as peas. Still hoping to introduce some other types of vegetables! And make homemade fresh food a larger part of her diet. I just don't want to have any deficiencies.

[GreenWing]

Tiki eats when I eat; she likes to eat with her flock.

I feed her toast/fruit/veggies/some nuts in the morning, and also fresh food in the evenings (usually protein and pasta, like scrambled eggs minus milk and quinoa; quinoa pasta is awesome for birds and they love it). She also gets her seed/nut/pellet mix that she can snack on throughout the day. Most of her food is fresh food, though. Her favorite foods seem to be berries and kale from the garden, scrambled eggs minus milk, yams, and quinoa pasta.

We eat together, but sometimes she wants to land on my shoulder and have what I'm having.

Tiki loves food... probably the biggest challenge is preventing her from getting fat. Senegals are prone to getting fat.

[pchela]

In the morning, my guys get a mix of frozen veggies, sprouts, whatever fruit I have handy, a mixture I make with a flax seed bread, baby carrot or sweet potato food, flax seed oil, ground cuttlebone and some other birdie vitamin types stuff and sometimes a cooked food like Crazy Corn or Birdie Bistro. During the day, they have a bowl of some type of Goldenfeast mix combined with Bountiful Harvest mix. At night they get a bit of Avicake for their bedtime snack. If there is training, they get shelled sunflower - though I need to find a different training treat - any other treats (almonds in shell, walnuts in shell, pine nuts in shell, nutri berries etc) are put in foraging toys or rolled up in paper and hidden for foraging. It sounds like a lot but the portions are small.