The food needs to be fresh and nutritious, free from mould, contamination by mice, rats or other birds, and free from poisons.
The food needs to be offered in such a way and quantity that will be consumed before it becomes spoiled.
We want the food offered over a 24 hour period to be nutritionally balanced and the food consumed over a 24 hour period to be nutritionally balanced.
The food should be offered in such a way as to mimic the feeding habits of the birds in the wild. Sulphur Crested Cockatoos tend to gorge early morning and late afternoon and
therefore should be offered their main food (seeds) at those times and a variety of fresh greens throughout the day. Ad lib feeding of seed may lead to obesity.
The nutritional requirements of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos may differ with the time of the year, the breeding and moulting cycles. Extra greens and protein sources may be offered
during breeding and moulting.
The types and variety of food that we commonly offer our pet birds frequently have little resemblance to the diets their ancestors ate in the wild before the land was degraded by
human agriculture and farming. Sulphur Crested Cockatoos are primarily seed eating birds, and ideally would be offered the types of seed they would eat in the wild. They seem to spend
more time feeding in trees then on the ground and also appear to seek insects etc. hidden under the bark of some trees. Wild cockatoos have also been seen eating dead fish washed up on
beaches and sun-bleached bones in paddocks.
However in practice for convenience and economy we usually feed a limited mixture of introduced seed types.
