Information: Chop Recipes for Birds

Bird Chop Recipes for a Healthy, Varied Diet

Providing your bird with a varied, balanced diet is essential for supporting their long-term health and wellbeing. While a high-quality formulated pellet diet may form the foundation of many companion birds' nutrition, fresh vegetables, leafy greens and other bird-safe ingredients play an important role in providing variety, enrichment and valuable nutrients. Bird chop is a convenient way to incorporate a range of fresh foods into your bird's daily diet, combining finely chopped vegetables, herbs, leafy greens and other suitable ingredients into an easy-to-serve meal. Whether you're preparing food for a budgie, cockatiel, conure, African grey or larger parrot, these bird chop recipes will give you inspiration for introducing more fresh, nutritious ingredients into your feathered friend's diet.

Colourful vegetables - choose 3 or more 

  • green beans
  • brussel sprouts
  • broccoli
  • cauliflower 
  • zucchini
  • capsicum w seeds
  • pumpkin w seeds
  • fresh snow peas or sugar snap peas
  • red or green chillies
  • Fresh corn cut off the cob 

Leafy Greens - choose 2

  • spinach
  • silverbeet
  • kale
  • any asian green
  • sprouts like alfalfa, mung beans, lentils, chickpeas - choose one 

Cooked and cooled legumes - choose one 

  • lentils
  • chickpeas
  • mung beans
  • black beans
  • Quinoa

Root Vegetables - choose one 

  • Beetroot 
  • Cooked Sweet Potato
  • Carrot 

Fresh herbs - optional - choose one 

  • coriander
  • basil
  • dill
  • rosemary
  • thyme

Other additional toppings (add after putting in food processor)

  • hemp
  • ground flax meal (meal preferable to seed) 
  • chia

Chop Tips

  • For small birds blitz your ingredients in a food processor to make a fine chop - chia seeds can be added afterwards to soak up some of the moisture 
  • For larger birds chop by hand into larger pieces 
  • Make chop without fruit. Fruit can be offered as a treat 
  • Cool any cooked items. Run under cold water until completely cool.
  • Dried beans should always be rehydrated and fully cooked and cooled 
  • Use fresh fruit or vegetables. Frozen veg is ok but tends to make a wet soggy chop which birds don’t tend to like. Don’t use canned or tinned vegetables or fruit 
  • Ideally make up and use within a few days. Can be frozen but many birds prefer fresh. 
  • Don’t include high fat ingredients like sunflower seeds and nuts 
  • Foods that can never be used: avocado, garlic, onion, tomato stems and leaves, mushrooms, fruit pits, rhubarb, salted nuts or salted seeds, uncooked dried beans


More Helpful Information:

Information: Ideal Bird Diet - Flighted Species of Bird – The Rabbit and Bird Doctors
Information: Why Not Seed? (Bird Diet) – The Rabbit and Bird Doctors

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