Should Parakeets be Fed Twice a Day?

User Question
Have had my wonderful parakeet for six weeks. I still trust your website because of your love for these precious little birds. I have read recently that I should only put out the food dishes twice a day. Right now, I leave food in the dishes all day. What do you do with your birds? Thank you so much for a great website.

Lisa's Answer
Wow, where did you read that? Everywhere that I have read, everyone I have talked to, and every bird magazine that mentions this topic says explicitly to leave food in the dish - and that the danger is that people UNDERfeed their parakeets by assuming a bowl of "empty seed chaff" is really seed the parakeet can eat. Parakeets don't gorge. They don't get fat. They eat during the day in small nibbles, just like humans are supposed to do. Most nutritionists now say that in addition to 3 regular meals during the day, humans should have regular healthy snacks in between too, and drink water regularly. The exact same is true for birds. Birds have small bodies. They need to keep a regular supply of food going in one end, because it keeps coming out the other end.

If you were putting FRESH food, like lettuce and egg and such, then that should be taken out after a few hours. Maybe that's what you read. But that's separate from the seed that's in the cage. They should never be *without* food. But you don't want fresh food to be mouldy or icky - so you would only leave the fresh greens and vegetables and such in there for a few hours.

Best of luck,

Lisa

Visitor Response:

Lisa, I will try to send you the website. I know my bird just has lots of small meals during the day. It is from an online book I read by T.J. Lafeber D.V.M who puts out the Lafeber bird products. It was the chapter in the book "Let's celebrate Pet Bird" called Mealtime should be a special Occasion... He also caused me some problems with encouraging "holding birds" because everysince I tried to follow thru on this, my very friendly little parakeet seemed to have lost all trust in me, so now I am patiently working to get it back. I read several of the chapters online free... Will follow up with the website....it may or may not come thru. Thanks so much for sharing your bird wisdom!

... What Dr. Lafeber said was to only put the dish in for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon, and this is promoting his products the Lafeber pellets, Avi-cakes, and Nutriberries (definitely not fresh food). Instead of reading his website, I think I will stick to yours!!! Love your questions and answers because they are so informative. Keep up the great work!

My Response:

Even the pellet makers' packages I've read say to put the pellets out all day long, plenty for the bird to eat during the day. In the wild, parakeets can eat when they are hungry. It's the way their bodies are set up. If you start to stress them by making them wait for YOUR schedule, sitting around hoping and wishing that someone feed them before they starve to death, that's just not good for an even-tempered, happy parakeet. Then the parakeet will gorge when they see food, so now food is coming in giant gulps or not at all. What happens if you're running late from work or school? The parakeet just starves for a few extra hours? It really doesn't make sense to me to do that to a parakeet. They have small bodies, their body can only HOLD a small amount of food in it at a time. So their natural pattern is to eat several small meals throughout the day, resting in between.

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