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Cockatiel diet questions

My question is regarding pellet food. I want to add some pellets to my cockatiel's food so as he doesn`t eat an all seed diet. On checking the ingredients I found they included ground millets, ground sunflower seeds, sucrose, salt, oats, artificial colours/flavours, zinc amongst others. Would this not be the same as if he was eating these seeds? Also I read somewhere,not to give birds salt and zinc was toxic to them. Can you advise please.

A pelletized or formulated diet product is, overall, a step in nutritional support for most companion parrot species. The big difference between these products and a seed mixture, is that there is uniformity in what is being consumed, and a balance of the nutrition being delivered - which does not occur nearly as well when birds are fed a varied seed mixture diet. The seeds that would be available for a wild cockatiel to eat are going to also have a very different nutritional make up than those domestically produced seed mixtxures, most likely.

And salt and zinc are both essential nutrients. In excess, both can potentially cause harm. Deficiencies of both will cause harm. Diagnosis of toxicosis is not as simple as many folks may want to believe - leading to issues of overdiagnosis and incorrect and sometimes even harmful treatment regimes. There is alot of incorrect and outright pseudoscience out there, particularly about zinc poisoning, and you need to be very critical of the scientific accuracy of rmany of the information that you may receive.

About Brian Speer, DVM

Avian veterinarian Dr. Brian Speer was raised in a small town on California’s coast. He received his BS in Biology from California Polytechnic State University in 1978, and his DVM degree from the University of California at Davis in 1983.

An active member of the Association of Avian Veterinarians (AAV), Dr. Speer is a much sought after guest speaker and has presented at numerous conferences in the avicultural and zoological communities both within the United States and abroad. He is well published in the AAV annual proceedings, has served as guest editor for the journal Seminars in Avian and Exotic Pet Medicine, the Veterinary Clinics of North America, and authored chapters in several recent veterinary medical texts on pet bird, avicultural and ratite medical topics. In 1995 he co-authored the extensive avicultural reference, The Large Macaws, and helped to co-author Birds for Dummies in 1999.

Since 1989, Dr, Speer has run a “bird’s only” practice in the San Francisco Bay area and is the President and Director of The Medical Center for Birds. He is a consultant for The Veterinary Information Network (Avian Medical Boards) and the Maui Animal Rescue and Sanctuary. In 2003 he was the recipient of the Lafeber award for excellence in private practice of avian medicine and surgery and in 2006, was named Speaker of the Year for the North American Veterinary Conference.