Have you ever sat eating your dinner and noticed your cockatiel eyeing up the bright green broccoli florets on your plate and thought to yourself, can cockatiels eat broccoli?
Broccoli is safe for cockatiels to eat and should be eaten as part of a healthy diet along with other fruit and vegetables. So to answer your question, yes, cockatiels can eat broccoli.
Broccoli is considered one of the superfoods and is full of vitamins and minerals, and important antioxidants that are essential in the fight against diseases.
So the next time you’re enjoying your lunch or evening meal and your cockatiel has his eyes totally focused upon your broccoli, go ahead and share; he will thank you for it.
Now we know the answer to can cockatiels eat broccoli, we can now look into other aspects of feeding our feathered friends this wonderfully nutritious vegetable.
How Do I Prepare Broccoli for my Cockatiel to Eat?
There are several ways in which you can cook your broccoli to dish up on your plate, such as boiling, steaming, roasting, or quickly blanching in some boiling water.
All the above involve cooking your broccoli, but many cockatiels will be quite happy eating the vegetable raw. In fact, by boiling your broccoli, you are destroying up to 90% of its nutrients.
How you feed it to your cockatiel if raw, really depends on your cockatiel itself. If you have a fussy eater, then maybe it’s best to finely chop it up and place it in the palm of your hand.
Doing it this way will seem more like a treat to your bird, as this is usually the way we feed them sunflowers and sesame seeds as treats.
If you are going to put broccoli directly into their food bowl, remember to chop it up if it’s an overly big floret to make it easy for your bird to handle.
Broccoli florets can be quite large, quite often twice the size of your bird’s head.
Imagine going to a restaurant and being served a meal that was twice the size of your head. It would be a little off-putting… You want your cockatiel to enjoy his broccoli, not have a battle with it.
Nobody really likes cold food. Okay, maybe a cold Chinese the next morning or a slice of pizza from the night before, but on the whole, cold food is not very appealing.
For this reason, try to serve your cockatiels broccoli warm.
Steaming your broccoli will be the best option if you’re going to serve it to your bird warm. You won’t want to be steaming your vegetable for long.
Five minutes should be quite long enough. It’s more about the warmth of the food than about the cooking.
Is Broccoli Good for Cockatiels?
Broccoli contains vitamin A, an important skin nutrient that helps with the wellbeing of your cockatiel’s eyes, quills and helps ensure a strong immune system.
Vitamin B is an essential nutrient for stressed or sick birds, and you’ll be glad to know that broccoli has it in abundance.
You’ll also be happy to be informed that it will help anticipate any anxiety, depression, and mood swings in your birds’ behaviour.
The calcium in broccoli helps your cockatiel maintain its strong skeletal form and the potassium in the vegetable helps manage fluid balance, muscle contractions, and nerve signals.
Making for a more active and playful bird.
The iron in broccoli does its job by making oxygen conveying proteins, myoglobin, and haemoglobin. A lack of iron in your bird’s diet can bring about anaemia.
You should bear in mind though, that substantial amounts of iron can cause serious damage to your cockatiel’s essential organs, so you need to find a healthy balance making sure you don’t overdo it with this mineral.
So there you have it. Not only can cockatiels eat broccoli, but they can also benefit immensely from it.
Try to implement it in part of your cockatiels healthy balanced diet, and get the hoover at the ready, because as bird owners are aware, they are not the cleanest of eaters.