Why is Parrot Nutrition So Hard?

We get so much conflicting information about parrot nutrition, especially between the debate of whole foods versus pellets. It can be really hard to navigate it all! How on earth are you expected to feed your pet a balanced diet, not go broke, feel like you're doing the right thing, and not explode from anxiety through the process? 

Today I am going to go into some of the intricacies of parrot diets, and why I believe no one can agree. 

To start, I think a lot of parrot people now understand that feeding only seeds can be lacking in vital nutrients, particularly calcium, Vitamin D3, and Vitamin A. It is nuanced though, because some species arguably do better on a diet that has more seeds than pellets, and some species seem to do better without pellets at all.

The truth of the matter is, we are still in relative informational infancy about how to feed parrots, especially since research so far has put all parrots into one umbrella, when we are beginning to realize that species can be quite varied in their dietary needs. Dogs, as an example, even though we have many breeds of dogs, and there may be some correlated differences between dietary needs within those breeds, they are all still one species, Canis lupus familiaris. 

Parrots are not breeds. They are distinct species that have similar anatomy, but are not related in the same fashion that dogs are. A scarlet macaw, Ara macao, and a cockatiel, Nymphicus hollandicus, are both within the Psittaciformes order, which is to say they are both parrots. However, cockatiels (family Cacatuidae, or cockatoos) and a scarlet macaw (family Psittacidae, holotropical parrots) are separated not only be thousands of miles and very different environmental niches, but also thousands of years of evolution.

The domestic dog is a subspecies of the grey wolf (Canis lupus), belonging to the family Canidae and the suborder Caniformia, meaning "dog-like" carnivorans within the order Carnivora. To put the parrot comparison in perspective: cockatiels and macaws, while both parrots, are no more closely related to each other than a grey wolf (Carnivora > Caniformia > Canidae > Canis lupus) is to a brown bear (Carnivora > Caniformia > Ursidae > Ursus arctos). No one would expect a wolf and a brown bear to thrive on the same diet, but because parrots share similar physical features like hooked beaks and scaly feet, we tend to assume they all have the same nutritional needs.

Furthermore, beyond a few prominent, published researchers like Drs. Harrison, Lafeber, and Roudybush, who later founded parrot food companies, many of our current dietary research for parrots is actually on chickens. Chickens, of course, are a domesticated animal and absolutely not even in the same order as parrots, but because they have feathers and are easy and cheap to obtain, a lot of our current understanding about what parrots "need" is directly related to poultry studies. Additionally, feeding trials for many commercial parrot foods on the market are extremely limited in scope, both in number of individuals and in included species. Dog foods have the benefit of more time, more money, more research, and only one species which which to focus on. 

Speaking of domestication, dogs and parrots are also different in another way that has an impact. We currently estimate that dogs have been domesticated for upwards of 15,000 to 30,000 years, and we've been taming wild dogs for perhaps another 10,000 years before that. Parrots, in contrast, have at this point only been kept as pets for perhaps 5,000 years. I do expect we will find evidence of parrots being kept much longer than that sometime in the near future as we pursue more knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of South America and Australia, as the 5,000 year mark is predominantly based on European accounts. 

While we have been breeding parrots for a long time, we haven't actually domesticated them. They are genetically closely related to their wild counterparts, besides some color mutations, and their dietary needs have not been much altered. Dogs on the other hand, are quite a bit different than the grey wolf they are descended from. They differ not only in their body shapes, sizes, and coats, but also in diet. In the process of domestication, dogs started to adapt to the grain heavy diet of their caretakers. 

So it seems like the logical take away would be to just feed parrots what they eat in the wild. This has it's own limitations. For one, we are still trying to learn more about their wild diets. Parrots are well suited for their environments, and in many species, their ecological niche is high up in the treetops where it is hard to monitor them.

Even when we can observe them, we can draw the wrong conclusions. For instance, we believed for a long time that parrots in the Amazon rainforest ate clay because it would help digest toxic elements they are eating. New research shows that they actually eat it because their wild diet is low in sodium, and they eat the clay to supplement this necessary mineral. Some parrots have also been observed eating wild avocados, which are considered a toxic food and should never be fed to captive birds.

We do know they eat seasonally, and that they have extremely varied diets. Even then though, replicating a wild diet is hard because much of what we have observed them eating is simply not obtainable in a cultivated setting outside of their home ranges, or they eat them at different ripeness levels than humans harvesting them would agree with. 

The other main issue with the wild diet is that the life of a wild parrot and a captive parrot differs dramatically in energy expenditure. A wild parrot needs to spend a lot of energy flying, looking for food, escaping threats, bonding with other parrots, and raising a family. Our family pets are usually doing very little of any of that. Even those that are encouraged to forage for their meals and left out of their cages much of the day simply do not have the need to spend as much energy as their wild counterparts. Thus, high sugar and fat foods in the wild that are coveted as prized finds in their natural environment would likely do a disservice to them in our homes. 

As you can see, there is a myriad of reasons as to why there is so much debate within the parrot community as to what the appropriate diet for our birds should be. It is why I am a proponent of a varied diet that includes pellets, veggies, fruit, grains, seeds, and nuts, allowing for differences between species as necessary. I understand the limitations of the knowledge we currently have, and am always willing to adjust as new information comes in. I also think that any company or person that claims to know everything, or that their product can constitute 100% of the diet, is leaving out a lot of nuances.