Chop for Conures?

I've been reading about chop and know of some ingredients that can be used.

I'd like to know if anyone has any ideas on ingredients with good nutritional value that can be frozen and heated up in water every morning.

Right now I have a bag of frozen veggies that contain corn, carrots, green beans, and peas. Every morning I take about a spoon full or two of veggies and heat them up in the microwave with some water.

Lily only eats the corn and carrots and she'll eat the peas and greenbeans sometimes if I leave them in there long enough. Otherwise, she doesn't really get much a variety in the morning. I'd love to give her more nutrition that she'll eat up every morning.

What I'm looking for is ingredients that can be mixed together, frozen, and all heated up in the same way(in water in the microwave).

Some ideas I had:

-boiled egg pieces
-shredded chicken, cooked, no seasonings or anything
-brown rice
-various veggies(corn, carrots, greens, etc..)
-black beans

I know veggies can be frozen and heated, same with beans and chicken, but what about boiled eggs? I'm not sure if they'll stay good frozen or if they'll go bad eventually. If they do go bad, how long do they usually last?

Also, can anyone give me a list of ingredients that I can add besides the ones listed below. Here's my plan for what I'll put into chop:
-corn
-carrots
-black beans
-shredded chicken
-boiled eggs(if it won't go bad)
-brown rice
-bell pepper(green and/or red)
-zuccini
-squash
-sweet potato
-celary
-nori(if I can find it. It's basically seaweed)
-kale and other lettuce/leafy greens

Some ingredients I'll mix in after the veggies are cooked to avoid extra mush or to avoid them draining out when I drain the water. I was thinking of adding oats, red pepper, and other seasonings/herbal seasonings that are healthy for birds. Any suggestions on those?

Thanks for reading! If anyone has links or videos on good chop recipes then I would really appreciate it! c:

Almost any fruit or veggie you would eat, prepared the way you would prepare it. I'd only avoid mushrooms since they are apt to spoil rapidly and are often contaminated when you bring them home from the store. Too much spinach isn't good and I'd probably also avoid onion and garlic, especially raw. And I'm a bit paranoid, but when I feed celery I chop it quite fine because those strings are so tough I could imagine them impacting in the crop.

Scooter is fond of sugar snap peas which aren't on your list.

I'd go easy on the herbs, personally. I've not seen much research and herbs tend to have very concentrated aromatic compounds, that's why they are so flavorful, and also why some have measurable pharmaceutical properties.

sugar snap peas as deb said, snow peas, beets, corn on the cob, blackberry, blueberry, strawberry (organic only as this fruit. tend to have the highest level of pesticides) jalapeno, habanero, almond, walnut (1 a day on the nuts) banana chips, apples, papaya (with seeds) cucumber, pomegranates, melons,chard i will also give sometimes a bit of whole wheat bread fresh baked from the bakery

mushroom, onion, avacado, chocolate, salt, sugar are toxic to them there are some other foods you can find a list on the net

celery i don't use it is to stringy and as little nutritional value.

whole wheat pasta or rice, whole wheat oats, beans cooked thoroughly
I just made my birdies a mash this morning of cornmeal, sweet potato,banana, flax seed , blackberry,cherry for my birdies they seem to like to in the afternoon i will give her snow,sugar peas, peppers, carrot with some black-beans

Black-beans if you cook them will keep for 4-5 days in a covered container in the frig, in my house i have some black-bean fanatics so its a big staple in this house. hard boiled eggs can keep in the frig for a couple days these i precook. scrambled egg i give some mornings to when i am cooking them i just cook the birds some of their own with no seasoning

If you are a seed sprouter you can sprout quinoa, mung bean and wheatberry

My birds like the mash but I cannot get them to eat prefrozen lugumes , the berries the will eat prefrozen i guess because those berries are their favorite LOL.. also i would only cook a veggie if you gotta the crunching helps their beak not only that every time you cook a veggie or fruit they lose their nutritional value.

Birds can eat jalapenos and habaneros!?

yes they are very good for them, the hotter the pepper the better mine will eat a habanero before a jalapeno LOL

In the recipie forum you should be able to find lists of ingredients as well as links to food that is safe and the list is almost endless. tons of ideas there. Alison and sweetie pie

I had been reading and researching on great ways to do this also.

I'm freezing as I post this an ice cube tray of a mix I made this morning.

All I did was cut up bananas, grapes, carrots, peas and green peppers. I added some 100% orange juice to solidify everything and scooped it out into an ice cube tray. Poured some extra juice to fill the tray and put it in the freezer. Tonight when it's frozen I'll take a cube out and put it in chichis dish.

I live in Georgia and to save on the electric we try not to freeze the house. So it's not hot in here but not cold either. So I'm sure a nice block of fruits and veggies should be a big hit!!

I just got my GCC, and have been feeding her mostly by the chop diet. What I did was put everything threw the food processor. That way she can not pick her favorites out. It is working out great and she is eating almost all of it. I put a couple of days worth into sandwich bags and froze them. Here are some of the fruits/veggies I added,

collard greens
broccoli and broccoli greens
swiss chard
sweet potato greens
carrots
white and purple potatoes
apples
cherries
green and red bell peppers and seeds

That all I can remember right now. So far for me that has been working out well. When I just chopped up the veggies she was able to pick threw it, now she is eating it all.

I find that the yolk of the boiled egg will mush too much and make a sticky mess. Same goes for crushed pellets (if you wanted to add some) and crushed Flax Seeds. So I add scrambled eggs instead of boiled, it freezes and keep just fine. I sprinkle the crushed Flax Seeds and crushed Pellets on top just before serving.

I also use Quinoa. It doesn't reheat very well I find, it dries out. Definitively better freshly made.

Are you all feeding this as the sole diet? How long do your birds have access to it? How many times a day do you offer it? For cooked foods I try to avoid leaving anything in the cage longer than about a half hour.

DebsFlock said:

Are you all feeding this as the sole diet? How long do your birds have access to it? How many times a day do you offer it? For cooked foods I try to avoid leaving anything in the cage longer than about a half hour.

Click to expand...

For me it is in addition to pellets, seeds, sprouts, fruits. I offer it once per day and I leave it a couple of hours in the cages. The amount of time you can leave it out before it spoils depends on the heat/humidity you keep your birds in.

True. I tend to push the timescale for my fruit and veggie mix, but the house is air conditioned and we live in a desert. But cooked foods are inherently pretty moist and things like egg and meat don't have a hugely long shelf life outside the fridge. So I tend to be more careful with that when I offer it.