What to Feed a Conure: A Complete Diet Guide

Feed a conure a diet built on formulated pellets, with plenty of fresh vegetables and only a little seed. A good daily split is roughly 70 to 80 percent pellets, 20 to 30 percent fresh vegetables and leafy greens, and seed kept to a small topping. Fruit is an occasional treat, not a staple.

The two things to get right are vitamin A and fat. Conures on a seed-only diet commonly develop vitamin A deficiency and obesity, so pellets plus orange and dark green vegetables do the heavy lifting. Offer food in a no-mess Seed Cube feeder to cut waste, and see our full conure care guide for housing and health.

Vitamin A deficiency is one of the most common nutritional problems avian vets see, and seed-fed conures are a classic case. Seeds are high in fat and low in vitamin A, so a conure living on a seed mix slowly runs short. The signs are easy to miss at first: crusty or blocked nostrils, white plaques in the mouth, poor feather colour, sneezing and repeat infections. Left unchecked it damages the airways and kidneys.

The fix is simple. Base the diet on pellets, which are fortified with vitamin A, and offer orange and dark green vegetables every day. Do that and you prevent the single most common diet disease in conures, along with the obesity that a fatty seed diet brings.

Formulated pellets should make up 70 to 80 percent of what your conure eats. Unlike seed, a quality pellet is nutritionally complete and fortified with vitamin A, so your bird cannot pick out its favourite fatty pieces and leave the rest. Choose a small or mini pellet sized for a conure, such as an Australian formulated brand like Vetafarm, and avoid brightly coloured, sugary pellets. Offer a measured amount each morning rather than keeping the bowl endlessly full.

Vegetables and greens should make up 20 to 30 percent of the diet and can be offered every day. Lead with vitamin A rich choices: capsicum, carrot, sweet potato, pumpkin, and dark leafy greens like kale, silverbeet and bok choy. Round it out with broccoli, snow peas, green beans, corn and fresh herbs. Chop everything small, offer it fresh, and remove uneaten pieces within a few hours so they cannot spoil.

Seed is not banned, it is just a topping. Keep quality seed to a small share of the diet and treat it as enrichment rather than the main meal. Sprouted or soaked seed is a healthier option because sprouting lowers the fat and adds live nutrients. Fruit is high in sugar, so offer small pieces of apple, berries, pear or melon a few times a week, not daily.

Some foods are dangerous to conures and should never be offered: avocado, chocolate, caffeine, alcohol, onion and garlic, and anything salty, fatty or heavily processed. Avocado is toxic to birds across the board. Also remove fruit pips and apple seeds, which contain trace cyanide compounds.

Conure covers a big size range, so match the amount to your bird. A green-cheeked conure weighs around 60 to 80 grams and eats far less than a sun conure at 100 to 120 grams. The diet balance is the same, pellets, vegetables and a little seed, but portions and pellet size should scale. Watch your bird's weight on kitchen scales rather than filling the bowl to a fixed line, and adjust as needed.

Seed-loving conures can be stubborn to convert, so go slowly. Mix a small amount of pellet into the seed and gradually shift the ratio over two to four weeks. Offer pellets first thing in the morning when your bird is hungriest, warm or lightly dampen them to make them appealing, and let your conure watch you eat similar food. Weigh your bird weekly so you can confirm it is still eating during the change, and involve an avian vet if it loses weight or refuses food.