Spikie, my African Grey Parrot, asking for food. He loves corn-on-the-cob, chocolate biscuits, banana, cheese, milk and anything fattening and sweet. As a last resort, he’ll eat his sunflower seeds. I try to give him what he asks for, to encourage him talking and word association. He can tell me what he likes, and also throws what he doesn’t want on the floor. Most morning he asks “Spikie want some corn”. Unlike his owner, he will not touch beer, whisky or wine!
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4 replies to "[Spikie] Talking African Grey Parrot asking for Food"
That is a one cool bird
That's right. Chocolate can be toxic, but like everything, a little treat from time to is probably ok. The theobromine (a bitter alkaloid, very similar to caffeine) in dark chocolate is reported as nine times greater than milk chocolate, so a SMALL amount of milk chocolate may be ok. It is not just toxic to parrots and dogs (LD50 200mg/Kg), but also man (LD50 1000mg/Kg).
Actually, when Spikie is asking for Chocolate he is actually getting milk chocolate buttons and only one or two, so the amount of toxin is very low. Also avoid Rhubarb, Avocado, moldy seed and peanut mixes, salt … in fact anything you wouldn't want to eat a large quantity of yourself.
And I've done some calculations:
For a 400g bird; an LD50 of 200mg/Kg, and assuming 0.2% Theobromine in milk chocolate, equates to 40g of chocolate.
That would be two 20g packets of buttons, or even more as white chocolate is better than milk.
For a 60kg woman, an LD50 of 1000mg/Kg you may die (50% chance) with 30Kg of milk or 5000g of dark chocolate!
I'm now going to stop eating dark chocolate!
Spikie is wonderful! Please don't feed him chocolate. It contains theobromine which is very dangerous to parrots, dogs and cats. African Greys have very delicate livers and chocolate damages the liver. Sometime you have to say No even when the birds asks very sweetly. Yesssssssss!
How cute ^-^