Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have heard that fruits with too high a sugar content shouldn't be fed to parrots; is there any truth to this? It would somewhat surprise me if an animal who lives in the rainforest had problems with sweet fruits, but I'm always open to expert opinions.

I guess this is one thing I haven't heard before. The only reason/s I could think for this would be the following. First too many fruits cause loose stools and in the long run if the stools are too loose for too long can actually cause dehydration but that would take a long time and usually only if there is some other underlying health problem. Next if given too many fruits they might not want to eat healthier veggies, pellets, pasta etc. Too much sugar even in fruits is not good for any animal but fed in reasonable amounts should not cause any problems at all. Fruits can definitely be good for them but only when offered with other choices of healthy foods. If you notice your bird is only picking out the fruit simply don't offer it for a while or mix it in well with the other foods so that he/she has to at least taste and move around the other foods in order to get at the fruit.

We feed our amazons most kinds of fruit: apples, oranges, grapes, kiwi, papaya, peaches, apricots, mango, bananas, grapefruit, melons. We offer them pretty much any kinds of fruit we can get at our local stores. With all those choices suprisingly enough our three amazons would much rather have the veggies, pasta etc that is offered to them so we have no worries about them overeating fruits instead of healthier foods.

Were there any specific fruits you had heard were not good for them because of sugar levels etc?

Thanks for the answer! The fruit we heard had too much sugar was grapes; we try to give our parrot as much variety of fruit as we can get, but we prefer organic stuff (the one thing I know about bird physiology is that they are more sensitive than mammals to pesticides) and, especially during the Winter, the choice is limited: this week it is grapes.