Health Guide Center

What is the best diet for a cockatoo who will not each fresh fruit or veggies?

When I rescued my bird, the previous owner said that he would eat only peanuts, coffee and toast!!! Fortunately, a vet check-up deemed him in great shape despite the poor diet and smokey environment where he lived. My vet demands that the cockatoo be switched to a 100% pellet diet using HARRISON'S commercial pellets. Everything I read prescribes a varied diet to include mixed seeds and fresh food along with pellets. He delights in eating nuts from the shell including walnuts, hazel nuts, pecans and Brazil nuts. I am offering 2/3 pellets and 1/3 seed mixture and most of it is eaten (or on the floor of the cage) each day. My bird delights in drinking cranberry juice and apple juice from a cup while I have my coffee which I know is a poison for birds. He throws all fresh food out of his cup but will take cooked meat and whipped cream if I feed it by hand. I would love to hear from other cockatoo owners about their success with food for their bird.

Public Comments

1. what a spoiled bird!Try mixing bits of fresh fruit and vegies in the stuff he WILL eat.Good luck.Don't let him manipulate you!
2. As long as he is eating most of the pellets he should be in pretty good shape. I agree with the answer regarding mixing some fresh fruit and vegetables in with his other food
3. give it normal Bird-Seed for cockatoos.
4. i have a cockatoo....with a similar problem. i brought her home as a foster care for a bird rehabilitation center (that's where i got so into birds).the center took her and her family from a abusive and lazy owner.she would beat her dogs and cats and birds, let the cats out free with the birds, and so on and so on.they tried to keep up with her mother and her sister but her mother died form cancer and lack of nutrition. her sister was in a foster care too, but she died two weeks after the foster care took her in. the center had so many birds and did not have the time to take care of a 2 week old cockatoo. so i took her in. i hand fed her, and spoiled her and took her to the pet store with me for her to pick out her own toys (when she was strong and old enough of course). and so i adopted her and when she was weened off her formula and hooked on a pellet/seed mix i started her with veggies. she just wouldn't eat them, id chop em up real small but she still found them. so what i did(i know its cheating) is i took her old baby syringe and blended up her veggies and fruits and gave it too her like i did her formula. soon it was regular, and i decided to ween her from the veggie smoothie, so i mixed in her veggies with the smoothie and i started to add more whole fruit and less smoothie and now she eats veggies regularly! i hope this can help.... and i hope this wasn't too long!
5. Sounds like you have a great diet going. I'd reccomend trying some different veggies and in different methods; for example, the only fruit/veggie my tiel will really eat from her bowl is warm, cooked sweet potatoes. I can, however, sneak other veggies in there if I mash them up enough to get her to eat those too :)
6. try Dr. HARVEY'S