by Pajarita » Sun Aug 25, 2019 9:49 am
All birds, babies, juveniles AND adults, should always have food available to them all the time. Herbivore birds (which is, pretty much, what we all have because there are only two -possibly three- species of parrots that are omnivores but they are not normally kept as companions) are not like predators, they pretty much have some type of food or another right there where they are (trees!). The trick to keep them healthy is the type of food they have available. For a baby, as I said, you need to have soft seeds (a good quality budgie mix works because it has mostly millets), raw produce (one type of fruit, one veggie, one leafy green or a cruciferous like broccoli) and two types of soft food like gloop (which is easy to make and freeze so you don't have to make it fresh every day, just thaw it and warm it up in the microwave) and something else like the coooked corn meal (polena), couscous, pastina (this is the teeny tiny pasta they sell for babies or soup), oatmeal mixed with pureed fruit/veggies which need to be made fresh because they harden and dry easily. As the baby grows, it will start eating more on its own and will naturally gravitate toward the more 'grainy' food (this is why gloop is so useful, because you can use it as baby AND adult food) until, eventually, it will reject the formula. And this is the point when the baby is truly weaned - when it no longer wants to be fed and NOT when it can eat on its own.