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My name is Madeline Franco and I am here to talk about birds, specifically about parrots
and more specifically in this segment about where parrots get their food. Well if you
are talking about my parrots they get their food from me but if you are talking about
parrots in the wild generally a lot of them are seed eaters, fruit eaters, the ones that
are in the tropics of course have a wide variety a virtual smorgisbord available to them. Molokins
like coconut. They like particularly young coconut. They are the big, the Molokin is
the large peach colored parrot that is native to the islands of Molokas. They are somewhat
endangered or highly endangered actually. But they do like coconut. They do like fruits
and vegetables. They do like nuts. Some of the South American birds and many of the birds
will eat palm nuts. There seems to be something in the palm nut as far as their immune system
but when we have them living among us we like to feed them a pelleted diet which has been
researched heavily and formulated to balance their diet. Also we like to give them fruits
and vegetables, rice, beans, got to go easy on the soybeans though because they do contain
a fair amount of protein and that could cause some stress to your bird's system and we just
try to give them as balanced diet as much as we can, trying to replicate as much as
we can what they can get in the wild. A lot of people like to feed their birds and the
birds do really love it, they like to feed them pomegranates which are a very good antioxidant
but just be aware that if you feed them something like that that is somewhat colorful and messy
you may have to redecorate. You probably want to exercise caution or put that in an area
where you can definitely do some cleaning afterwards. Wear a raincoat if you are going
to feed pomegranate, that would be my advice. They really do get into their food. Parrots
will very often pick at something if they have access to bananas and things like that.
What I'll do is I'll give them little pieces of fruit because they will tend to waist a
lot if give them an entire apple they may just take one or two bites. One of the great
things about corn on the cob I like to give my birds sometimes every once in a while I
will give them a cob of corn with the leaves still on it and have them open the corn and
therefore it becomes a foraging item and also a toy so use your imagination when feeding
your birds. Remember they need a balanced diet like you do and you'll have a lot of
fun discovering new things that they like to eat. Again go easy on nuts of all kinds.
Many of the larger birds some of the Macaws, the Hyacinths can have a diet consisting primarily
of nuts but for the other birds you want to limit their intake of nuts.