What to Feed a Corella: A Complete Diet Guide

Feed a corella a diet built on formulated pellets, with fresh vegetables and leafy greens every day and only a small measured serve of quality seed. Australian avian vets who treat cockatoos, galahs and corellas recommend roughly 40 to 70 per cent premium commercial pellets, 20 to 50 per cent vegetables, sprouted seed and safe native browse, 7 to 15 per cent fruit, 10 to 15 per cent quality seed mix, and 1 to 5 per cent treats.

The part most guides leave out is how you serve it. A corella is built to dig its food out of the ground, so a full bowl left out all day is the wrong delivery system even when the contents are right. Spread the food through foraging toys and an enclosed feeder, and make the bird work for it.

Ask what a corella eats and almost every answer describes the wild bird: grain, grass seed, corms and bulbs. That is accurate, and it is exactly why so many pet corellas end up overweight.

Wild corellas eat what Australia planted. BirdLife Australia's Birds in Backyards notes that about 90 per cent of the long-billed corella's diet now comes from introduced food plants, mostly grain crops and the corms of onion grass. Grain is not what suits a corella. It is what happens to be in front of it.

The other half of the picture is the work. A wild corella walks a paddock in a flock and levers corms out of hard ground with a bill built for the job, and the long-billed corella's elongated upper mandible is exactly that: a digging tool. Your bird has the same tool and a bowl of seed it can empty in a few minutes.

Obesity is very common in cockatoo species, and Australian avian vets link it directly to diets high in seed. Fatty lumps develop and can interfere with the bird's movement. In many cases the lump reduces once the bird is moved onto a more appropriate diet, but any lump should be examined, because some are more serious than fat.

The fat load is easy to underestimate. RSPCA Australia points out that sunflower seed is about 49 per cent fat, roughly three times the fat in an average chocolate bar, and many other seeds are similar.

There is a slower consequence that corella owners rarely connect back to the food bowl. A chronically high-fat, high-cholesterol diet drives liver disease, and an overgrown beak is one of its visible signs. On a bird whose beak is its main tool, that matters. Trims are typically needed every six to eight weeks while the underlying problem continues, and may stop after one or two once the cause is corrected.

A formulated pellet is the base because it removes the bird's ability to pick out the fatty bits. Corellas are excellent selective feeders: given a mixed bowl they take the sunflower and the peanuts and leave the rest, so the diet the bird actually eats is far richer than the diet you served.

Aim for pellets at 40 to 70 per cent of what your corella eats. RSPCA Australia's general guidance for pet birds runs along the same lines, at roughly 60 per cent formulated diet and 40 per cent vegetables, with seed and fruit used as treats.

Choose a pellet sized for a large parrot. Vetafarm Nutriblend Large is a widely available Australian option for a bird this size. If your corella has a health condition, ask your avian vet which formula suits it.

Vegetables do the work seed cannot. Serve them fresh every day and make them the second largest part of the diet after pellets, at 20 to 50 per cent.

Good choices for a corella include capsicum, broccoli, corn, carrot, zucchini, squash, spinach, pumpkin, sweet potato, beans and peas. Sprouted seed counts here, and so does safe native vegetation: most Australian blossoms, gum nuts and branches are fine, provided you collect them somewhere wild bird droppings have not landed on them.

Fruit is a smaller slice at about 7 to 15 per cent. Melon, berries, banana, grapes, stone fruit, pear and apple all work. Remove apple pips and stone-fruit pits before serving.

Seed is not banned. It belongs at 10 to 15 per cent of the diet, measured out rather than topped up, plus 1 to 5 per cent for training treats such as unsalted nuts, cooked pasta, egg or brown rice.

Serve that seed layer as a portion, not as a standing bowl. For a corella's weight, that single change does more than swapping brands ever will.

Wild parrots spend more than half their day finding and handling food. A captive parrot eating from an open bowl is finished in under an hour, and work cited by LafeberVet puts birds on a pelleted diet at roughly 30 to 72 minutes a day. The rest of that time has to go somewhere, and in a corella it usually goes into screaming, chewing and, at worst, plucking.

Foraging solves two problems with one change. It slows the intake, so the bird is less likely to overeat, and it gives an intelligent, long-lived cockatoo a job. Hide portions of the day's pellets in cardboard tubes and paper parcels, thread some through safe browse, and serve the rest in an enclosed feeder the bird has to reach into rather than an open dish.

That is what the Seed Cube is for. Mounted on the cage bars, it keeps the scattered husks contained and makes the bird work slightly for each mouthful. It does not replace enrichment, but it turns the main meal into a small foraging task instead of a free lunch.

Never offer avocado, chocolate or cocoa, onion, alcohol, caffeine, salty or fried food, raw dough, or dairy. Avocado in particular can be fatal to parrots in small amounts. Skip iceberg lettuce and celery, which are mostly water and displace better food. Plain bread is not toxic in an occasional scrap, but mouldy bread is dangerous and bread is not food for a corella.

If the corellas you are asking about are the flock on your local oval rather than a bird in your lounge room, the answer is different. Little corellas are managed as a problem species in parts of Australia and are listed as unprotected in South Australia, where councils actively work to limit the food and water available to large flocks. Do not feed them. Everything else in this guide is written for a pet or aviary corella.

Most corellas arrive on seed and resist the change, so plan in weeks rather than days.

Start by mixing a small amount of pellets into the seed and raising the ratio gradually. Offer pellets first thing in the morning when the bird is hungriest, and hold the seed serve back until later in the day. Keep offering vegetables even while they are being refused, because acceptance often arrives suddenly after weeks of rejection.

Weigh your bird on kitchen scales through the changeover, and stop reducing seed if it loses weight. Never starve a bird onto a new food. Book a check with an avian vet before you start if your corella is older, overweight or unwell, and keep to check-ups every six to twelve months regardless, because birds hide illness well.