One of the best parts of owning a parakeet is watching them gobble down various snacks. But while it’s fun to give them treats, you need to be sure they’re all safe for your bird to eat.
So, where do strawberries fit into all this? Strawberries are perfectly safe treats for your parakeet, and they can be part of a healthy diet! But just because you can feed strawberries to your bird, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take certain precautions.
We break down everything that you need to know here.
Feeding Your Parakeet Strawberries
Before you start feeding strawberries to your parakeet, you need to do two things. First, take off the stems. Second, wash the strawberries thoroughly. Farmers spray pesticides on the fruit to keep bugs and other wildlife away during the growing process.
However, while washing the fruit does a great job of removing these pesticides, they can soak into the leaves a bit more and make it nearly impossible to clean them completely. While small amounts of pesticides are harmless to us humans, parakeets are much smaller, so they can have serious side effects.
Also, since strawberries are naturally so soft, there’s no need for you to cut them up like you need to with many other fruits and veggies. While your parakeet might appreciate bite-sized chunks, they can tear it apart themselves if you feed them a large strawberry.
Finally, keep in mind that while fruits are healthy snacks for your parakeet, they shouldn’t be a dietary staple. If you’re feeding strawberries to your parakeet every day, you’re probably overdoing it. You can give them a strawberry or two every other day.
4 Other Snacks for Your Parakeet
While strawberries make great treats, they’re not the only options that you have. Here, we highlighted four more snacks that you can use to mix up your parakeet’s diet.
1. Unsalted Popcorn
Popcorn doesn’t just make a great movie-time snack for you; it’s an extremely healthy option for your parakeet too! Just be sure that you’re giving them unsalted popcorn, with no butter or other sweeteners/flavorings. While popcorn itself is an extremely healthy treat for parakeets, the flavorings, butter, and salt can all be toxic.
2. Other Berries
Fruit is nature’s treat, and some of the best treats out there are berries. Whether strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, or some other berries, they’re excellent for your parakeet. Just be sure to wash them before feeding them to your parakeet.
3. Peanut Butter and Crackers
There are few treats that your parakeet will love more than delectable peanut butter. It’s creamy, rich, and delicious. But while your parakeet is bound to love peanut butter, you need something to feed it to them on.
Crackers make a great medium, but you need to use unsalted crackers. Even a relatively small amount of salt on a cracker can be toxic to birds, so always double-check that you’re giving them unsalted crackers.
- Related Read:Â Can Parakeets Eat Peanuts?
4. Bananas
While strawberries are delicious for your parakeet to chow down on, other excellent fruits for them are bananas (which are technically berries!). Just like with strawberries, you need to be careful how much you give them. But you also don’t need to be as careful about breaking them down into smaller chunks.
Ideal Parakeet Diet
Like many pet birds, parakeets thrive with a pellet-based diet. However, parakeets rarely accept pellet-based foods without being a bit stubborn about it. If that’s the case for your bird, you’ll need to wean them to a traditional pellet diet.
About 80% of a parakeet’s diet should consist of high-quality pellets to ensure that they are getting all the nutrients that they need. From there, you can feed them a mix of seeds and vegetables. Finally, feel free to add various bird-friendly snacks and fruits as treats every other day.
It’s best to keep snacks to every other day because if you give them too many snacks, they can end up not eating the rest of their food or overeating in general.
Foods to Avoid Feeding to Your Parakeet
Just like there are foods that you want to keep feeding your parakeet, there are also a few that you need to avoid. We highlighted five of those foods here.
Final Thoughts
Birds enjoy varied diets, and with a wide array of foods that you can give to them, there’s no reason that you can’t spoil your feathered friend. When you’re looking for a special treat, fruits like strawberries are almost always a good choice.
So, keep giving them new foods, but always take a few extra seconds to ensure that it’s safe for them before you do!
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Featured Image Credit: Piqsels
