27/03/2025
FEEDING FRUIT! 🍌
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Should we give our birds fruit? As usual, my answer is “yes but under certain circumstances/conditions.”
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Wild birds do not eat a bunch of super sweet, ripe fruit. Few if any humans who were accustomed to eating from American supermarkets would even consider eating the types of fruits wild parrots eat. We get highly cultivated fruits that have been selected and modified to be super sugary (compared to wild plants)!
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More appropriate choices for what we can get from the grocery store are typically lower sugar. Berries, plantain, baking apples (Granny Smith), very green bananas, underripe and rock hard mango (hard enough to grate with a cheese grater), and the like are often better options. If you can safely forage some, rose hips are also an excellent choice!
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I also like to leave seeds, peels, etc in place (though you should avoid this with stone fruits like peach and cherry as the pits contain trace amounts of arsenic). This adds enrichment. Be sure to wash though!
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I still keep fruits to a minimum though (once or twice a week for adults), as even these selections can be quite rich and inspire hormones. I am of course more generous for breeding birds during breeding season. While there is relatively little data out there on exactly what most species eat, this is a generally good rule of thumb for any parrot. Based on what we know, it seems unlikely that parrots need or benefit from higher sugar diets (though there are exceptions such as lorikeets).
