How To: Make a layered salad for your pet bird

Your bird will dive right into this layered goodness with this salad. Yes birds love seeds, but they also love salad. Follow along in this cooking or birds how-to video to learn how to prepare this layered salad.

The layers
1. Chopped greens, which are varied each week. Options include collard greens, parsley, mustard greens, Swiss chard, kale and dandelion greens. (If you have only one parrot, or a few parrots, choose one type of greens, but vary this weekly.)

2. Chopped (¼- to ½-inch cubes) green vegetables, including the following: brussels sprouts, zucchini and other summer squash, jicama, red or green peppers, fresh hot peppers, chayote squash, jicama, green beans, fresh peas, cucumber, celery, anise root, etc.

3. Chopped broccoli and carrots.

4. A mixture of chopped apples, oranges and whole grapes.

5. Frozen mixed vegetables. The containers are then placed in the refrigerator (don't freeze).

Once a week, prepare a layered salad mix as follows, and place this into individual plastic containers. For one parrot, you might make three quart-sized containers. For 10 parrots, you might make four gallon-sized containers. For 30 parrots, you might make seven two-gallon containers. Make sure that you wash all the fruits, vegetables and greens well. A salad spinner can be used to dry the greens. This mix stays fresh in tubs for up to seven days.

Serving Suggestions

Once everything from the tub is completely mixed together, I add enough of a high-quality seed mix to make up 5 percent of this mix. I might also add a scoop of pellets. This is then mixed together and fed to the birds. (Pellets are optional, but their inclusion into this mix at some point can help with their introduction.) Serve the mix each morning or as often as you need to.