I've had an Australian parakeet for two months now and I'm not sure about the right amount of food. I give it seeds and vegetables, but sometimes it seems like it eats too little or too much. What's the ideal portion?
What matters more than frequency is having food available all day long, because parakeets peck constantly instead of eating large meals like we do. Give him a quality seed mix and fresh vegetables every morning (lettuce, spinach, carrot), remove what he doesn't eat after a couple of hours so it doesn't go bad, and always leave him clean water.
From my experience at home, parakeets eat better if you leave food available all day, like others have said, but the trick is changing the seeds every morning instead of just adding to what's already there - those little guys are kind of picky and if they see dried-out or chewed-up seeds they lose interest. A portion is around a tablespoon of seeds per day, plus a little handful of fresh veggies (lettuce, broccoli, carrot), and if you notice he's leaving a lot of seeds untouched or he looks skinny, you adjust from there.
Is your parakeet active, with shiny feathers and no signs of losing weight? That'll tell you quite a bit about whether it's eating enough. The truth is the people above are right about leaving food available, but there's a detail they don't mention and it's important: not all seeds are created equal. A quality mix (sunflower, canary seed, hemp in small amounts) is better than leaving piles of cheap filler, because your parakeet will pick and choose selectively and might end up eating only what it likes, leaving the rest.
The other critical point is the proportion of veggies. By two months of having it, it should already be eating pretty well, so this is where a lot of people go wrong: vegetables shouldn't be more than 20-30% of its daily diet. Raw spinach, broccoli, carrot, apple without seeds, that stuff works well. But if you give it too much fresh veg, it might get too much moisture in its digestive system and you'll end up with diarrhea. I'd change the dry food every morning like one of the people above says, but also I'd remove the veggies a few hours after offering them (say max 4-5 hours) so they don't oxidize or rot in the cage.
Keep an eye on how many seeds are left at the bottom of the cage without shells too: if you see a pile it means it's eating well. And watch its behavior, because a healthy parakeet is active, playful and has energy. If you notice it starting to get sluggish or losing feathers, then you adjust. But in general, with food available all day (changed daily), fresh veg controlled and clean water, you've pretty much got it sorted.
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