Seed vs Pellet

User Question
Hi Lisa, love your website! We just purchased a very young parakeet a week ago and she is the sweetest thing! But, since when is it a "no no" to feed birds seed? The store told me to use the bright colored pellets because seed is no longer recomemnded- I had a parakeet as a child and always fed him a variety of different seeds and he was with me for 10 years and he was already 3 years old when I got him! I am just a little confused about this so as of right now I am giving both but she prefers the seed, what is your opinion on this?

Lisa's Answer
I talk a lot about seed vs pellet in my feeding area of the lisashea.com site - I would definitely read that all. You should *not* feed a keet just seeds - that is as malnutrition-causing as if you as a human ate bread and nothing else. Sure it might keep you alive but you'd suffer from severe malnutrition. In the wild, keets ate bugs, greens, etc. They didn't just eat seeds.

I wouldn't go with pellets, I would go with natural foods. We have a lot of advice on the site about how to get your birds to eat healthy foods.

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