Parakeet Treats

Items such such as cooked meats and pasta count as treats; however, here we are taking "treat" to mean the kind of item you will commonly see in a pet shop - seed bells and seed bars. The seed bell recipe below gives you the basic method for all treat foods of this nature.

A parakeet treat

Parakeet Seed Bells

Pet stores usually sell ready-made seed bells, and as long as you’ve checked that the ingredients are okay, these are fine. Making them is good fun too, though. The following simple recipe can also be coated on sticks, or put into wax paper and rolled into bars or tubes. Vary the seed mix, bearing in mind the advice given in the Parakeet seed section of this guide:

1 cup bird seed mix
2 egg whites
Rapeseed oil
Greaseproof paper
Small terracotta pots
8 inch lengths of wire

Beat the egg whites until frothy. Mix the whites with the seed. Grease the paper with a little oil, and line the insides of the pots. Fill the pots with the seed mixture, and insert both ends of the wire, drawing them through the drainage hole in the base of the pot, so that a loop of wire sits inside the mixture. Bake the pots in a cool oven (175-200°F) for 90 minutes or until the mixture has set (check after the first hour). Any hotter and the mix will overcook. Once cooled, gently remove the seed bells from the pots and peel away the paper. Hang from the roof of the cage by looping the ends of the wires through and around the bars. Make sure no sharp ends are accessible to the parakeets.