June 17, 2012

Good Eats for Vinny!


For us, as first time parrot owners, figuring out the food has been an experiment. We've fed him just about any type of food we've been recommended. All kinds of fruits and veggies, the right pellets (no additives and only with natural coloring), the right seeds, beans and peas, and so forth.

For about 2 to 3 months now, he's been off the Nutribird formula and he's doing great. One night, about a month after his last formula feeding, he was on a rant around dinner time and wouldn't eat his bean mixture. So we tried to feed him the formula again, but after 2 spoons, he flung it all around the room and went back to his old 'new' food. And that was that.


We've gotten into the habit of making his food once per month, bag it up in small batches, and put it in the freezer. On a daily basis, he gets one of those batches, additional fruits and/or vegetables, and a small handful of seeds or nuts.

The most important ingredients for this special Vinny-mix are: wheat pasta, barley, rolled oats, couscous, yam, pumpkin, mango, brown rice, chick peas, green peas, mung beans, black-eyed peas, adzuki beans and lentils. We boil it in separate batches and put stuff together according to boiling times. After cooling, we mix everything up in a huge bowl and put a good spoon full (half a cup) in each freezer bag. We've also experimented with putting in some veggies like broccoli, but stuff like that doesn't thaw out well.

In the morning, he gets a healthy seed/grain mix (again: no added vitamins/minerals), around dinner time he gets the mix and in the evening it's usually snack time. His absolute favorite snacks are red grapes, corn-on-the-cob, and pumpkin. That last one, we sometimes buy at the farmer's market.

He also loves almonds or sunflower seeds, but we usually only give him those when we train him. We do stimulate him by making him open the container himself, or hide it inside a toy.

If you have an Eclectus yourself (or maybe more than one), feel free to comment and let us know what you're feeding your 'child'. If you don't have any Eclecti (maybe this is it?), feel free to skip the technicalities above. Oops, too late! At least I hope you're enjoying the pictures in this post!

Take care and Bon Apetit!