Can Cockatiels Eat Spinach? Will It Like It?

Cockatiels, a friendly hand-tame bird species, make excellent pet birds. If you have a cockatiel as your feathered friend and are here looking for whether spinach can be fed to your cockatiel as part of a healthy diet, you’re in the right place.

So, can cockatiels eat spinach? To answer your question, yes, cockatiels can indeed have spinach. Spinach is even a healthy snack for them. Now that we have decided that spinach is one of the fresh vegetable cockatiels that can be fed, what do you think of fresh fruits? Or other items that make up an ideal diet? And exactly how much spinach is right for your pet?

Your pet bird will love to bite into leafy vegetables. It is perfectly safe to give spinach to birds. Among them, spinach is a member of the list of green vegetables in the cockatiel diet.

But can they have spinach as part of a daily diet? No, they cannot. While spinach itself, does not pose any health risks, an overabundance of spinach in a cockatiel can lead to digestive issues. Giving spinach to your cockatiels will result in active birds since fresh vegetables provide the bird’s energy.

Nutritional benefits of spinach

Giving your pet cockatiels spinach doesn’t only give them a fun snack but also certain health benefits that we are now going to discuss in detail. Spinach is a gold mine of nutrients. Let’s start with the vitamins. Spinach will flourish your pet bird with Vitamin A, Vitamin K, and Vitamin C.

Epithelial tissue, present in digestive tracts, respiratory tracts, and several other parts involves the use of vitamin A in its production. Vitamin A is also responsible for good vision. A deficiency of vitamin A can result in multiple health disorders such as conjunctivitis.

Vitamin K is required for the proper functioning of calcium and phosphate so that your pet bird can have good bone health. A deficiency of vitamin K can lead to deterioration in bone health. An abundance of vitamin C is required for blood clotting. Spinach provides a good amount of calcium in the form of calcium oxalate.

Vitamin C along with calcium and other substances in the blood are responsible for blood clotting when blood cells are exposed to air through an injury. Spinach in a regular diet maintains blood calcium levels so that next time your pet has an open wound.

Do cockatiels like spinach?

Yes, your pet birds will love munching on this healthy treat any time of the day but make sure not to indulge them too much.

Giving spinach to baby cockatiels

It is especially important to feed spinach to baby cockatiels to boost their calcium reserves. At that young age, their hollow bones are still in the stage of development making it essential that the calcium of absorption of young cockatiels is at the right level. Spinach doesn’t only provide calcium that is important for bird babies’ growth at this stage, spinach is also rich in beta-carotenes that are responsible for that beautiful red and yellow plumage bird owners and bird enthusiasts all adore.

Common food of cockatiels

Do you think your pets should have an all-seed diet? Surely all the bird species around you seem like bird “seed-alcoholics”? If you think leafy greens should also be part of a proper diet from what we learned above, you are right. Besides giving spinach to birds, you can also give them fresh food and fruit seeds, and different types of lettuces such as romaine lettuce among other pale vegetables.

It is common sense to feed less iceberg lettuce since the water content in it is high and nutrients are scarce. Not all types of seeds can be consumed by birds such as apple seeds that must be removed. You can let your cockatiels freely munch on sunflower seeds and different types of grains and mustard greens, bean sprouts, and black beans.

Dandelion greens are also a good snack. Your cockatiels will also love to be treated to sweet potatoes given they are well cooked. It is advised to feed them fresh leafy greens and not canned vegetables since the latter are low in nutrition and only contain calories. Now to complete the balanced diet, make

sure the birds sip enough water since there are important supplements in water too. Feed your bird fresh water.

How to prepare spinach?

Make sure the spinach is rinsed in clean water to rid of as many preservatives as possible. The spinach should be cut into small manageable pieces to avoid choking.

How much spinach is just right?

Even though spinach is a very nutritious food it can be safe to say that it is too nutritious. There is an imbalance of nutrients. So spinach should only be fed as a treat. Most cockatiels will have the common sense to not overindulge themselves in this snack but it’s better to be safe than to be sorry.

Spinach has abundant vitamins and ensures calcium absorption by bones but it also has complex compounds that your cockatiels’ body will have a stressful time breaking down in case there is too much that will eventually lead to bowel issues.

What to avoid

Now here is what to never let your bird eat. Hide your liquor from your birds. No alcoholic beverages can be a part of bird consumption. The list of toxic foods also contains avocado, caffeinated products, dairy products, and chocolate.

Cardiovascular health

Wild birds get a lot of exercises what with all the flying around. So bird experts emphasize the need to keep sugar content in the bird’s diet in mind to strictly control blood sugar levels, which if extends required level can cause health complications. If a balanced diet is not followed the worst-case scenario can be a cardiac arrest in birds.