If you’re struggling to get your bird to eat vegetables, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Many bird owners, including myself at times, face this challenge. Whether you own budgies, cockatiels, or large macaws, this is a challenge you need to overcome. 

Not eating a healthy diet will negatively impact your bird, which I’ll cover later.

To help you, I’ve listed 5 ways you can get your picky bird to eat their veggies.

These are the tips that helped me, and they can also be applied to other healthy foods you need to feed your bird.

Ready to improve your bird’s diet? Let’s go!

Quick Navigation:

• How To Get Your Bird To Eat Vegetables (5 Ways)
  • 1. Prepare Vegetables Differently
  • 2. Eat The Vegetable In Front Of Your Bird
  • 3. Offer It By Hand
  • 4. Serve Vegetables At The Right Times
  • 5. Add Treats To The Vegetable
• Why Do Birds Refuse To Eat Their Vegetables?
  • The Results Of Feeding An Unhealthy Diet

How To Get Your Bird To Eat Vegetables (5 Ways)

1. Prepare Or Present Vegetables Differently For Your Bird

Yes, presentation matters for many birds.

For example, my cockatiel would never eat carrots when chopped up in a bowl, but he loves to eat them when clipped to the cage. Sometimes, all you need to do is change the way the vegetables are presented or prepared.

Here are some different ways you can present vegetables to your bird:

• Chopped up in a bowl
• Raw
• Cooked
• Mashed up
• Blended
• Clipped to the cage
• On a plate
• Make a toy out of the vegetable
• On a skewer (veggie kebab!)

Despite his fussiness with carrots, I’m lucky my cockatiel is happy to eat most vegetables from a regular bowl.

And so I’m able to easily prepare and present nutritionally balanced mixes like this:

However, most bird owners aren’t as lucky as me.

Experiment with different preparation and presentation methods to see how your bird likes to eat their veggies.

2. Eat The Vegetables In Front Of Your Bird

Birds are influenced by the behaviour of flock members, including their human friends.

So how can you influence your bird to eat their veggies?

You need to actually eat the vegetable in front of them!

Take a few bites of that carrot or broccoli within your bird’s sight and they’ll likely want to take a few bites themselves. You could even take it one step further and exaggerate how good the food is by making expressive sounds.

“Mmmm, delicious!”

“This is so much better than seed!”

“don’t you wish you could have some?”

Make these sounds, along with some expressive head bobs, and your bird will think you’re eating food straight from the heavens.

This little trick is how I convinced my cockatiel to try asparagus.

Now he loves it and eats it every time it’s offered!

3. Offer The Vegetable To Your Bird By Hand

This works especially well if your bird knows you to feed pellets or seeds by hand.

When preparing your bird’s veggies, take a bit of time to offer a bite-sized piece by hand to encourage independent eating. After your bird takes a few bites and enjoys the food, they’re more likely to eat it independently.

This isn’t the most convenient method, but it’s an effective way of introducing new foods to your picky bird.

4. Serve Vegetables To Your Bird At The Right Time

Serving vegetables at the wrong times will cause your bird to avoid them.

But if you serve vegetables at the right time, your bird will dive in and eat them!

The right time to serve vegetables will be different for all birds, so you must experiment with different serving times. I used to serve vegetables in the afternoon, but that never worked. I’ve since started serving veggies to my cockatiel in the mornings and now he eats them every time!

He doesn’t just eat a little bit, he fills up on his morning veggies, which is great!

If your bird refuses to eat vegetables, try serving them at different times, ideally earlier in the day before they’ve filled up on other foods.

5. Add Treats To The Vegetables

Adding a few tasty treats to the vegetable can encourage super picky eaters to try them.

It’s easier to do with some vegetables compared to others.

I find it easy to add seeds and millet to the broccoli heads. It’s also quite easy to poke a few gaps in a whole carrot, add some seeds in the holes, and present it as a fun toy:

After eating the seeds, he quickly moved on to eating the carrot.

Another way of doing this is by adding seeds to a pureed vegetable mix.

Get creative with this method and find ways to add treats to their vegetables, especially if you have a picky eater.

List Of Vegetables Your Bird Can Eat

Here’s a list of a few healthy vegetables you can feed your bird:

• Carrots
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Asparagus
• Peas
• Corn
• Beans
• Capsicum
• And so many more!

The best way to find out if a specific vegetable is safe for birds is to search “Is (vegetable) safe for birds?” and look at the answers from reliable sources.

Not blogs.

Not forum pages.

You must actually look for vet-approved, expert-written, or trustworthy answers.

Foods To AVOID Feeding Your Bird

While most vegetables are safe to feed your bird, many should be avoided.

Here’s a list of some of the foods you must avoid feeding your bird as they’re either toxic or inedible:

• Rhubarb
• Tomato leaves
• Avocado
• Garlic
• Onions

Although these aren’t all vegetables, they’re all toxic to birds and must be avoided.

Why Do Birds Refuse To Eat Their Vegetables?

It’s no secret that many bird owners face the challenge of their birds refusing to eat the healthier part of their diet; vegetables.

But why do birds do this?

Why do birds refuse to eat vegetables despite being good for them?

There are 3 main reasons why:

1. Veggies weren’t introduced to the bird when they were young

2. The bird would simply rather eat less healthy “junk” food (seeds, nuts, millet, etc.)

3. They don’t know that vegetables are edible

All of these reasons will cause a bird to ignore vegetables when they’re offered.

However, if you follow the advice above, you can get your bird to eat healthy vegetables even if they’ve never seen a vegetable before in their life. It’s important to note that if a bird is old and has truly never eaten a vegetable, it will take a while before they eat it consistently.

The Results Of Feeding An Unhealthy Diet

Just like us humans, your bird’s health will deteriorate when fed an unbalanced diet.

Since many birds require vegetables as a significant part of their overall diet, their refusal to eat veggies is a problem.

A diet lacking in proper nutrition can lead to many health problems, including:

• Obesity

• Fatty liver disease

• Nutrient deficiencies

With seed-only diets, the health impacts are even worse.

But don’t panic, as long as you’re feeding a diet fairly close to your bird’s nutritional requirements, they won’t get sick any time soon.

You still have time to get your bird to eat their vegetables.

Thank you for reading!

Learn 17 Ways To Introduce New Foods To Fussy Birds