Millet Sprays - bad for conures?

[Tarislar]

Hi all,

New member here. Registered to ask a quick question. I arrived at a bird club meet with a bag of foxtail millet sprays as treats for some of the birds. I have a sun conure. I was told by another member that I could not let the sun conures or the African Greys that were there eat the millet sprays and that it was bad/toxic for them. He said the only birds that could eat it were cockatiels.

I've found so much conflicting advice on birds all over the net to people giving me advice in person that I really need to start checking some of this stuff.

So can anyone tell if this is correct or not?

 

[mellykyitus]

my conure loves millet spray, i've never heard that they shouldn't eat them, my love bird goes crazy for it, its the first thing she'll eat. i only give it to them once a week but there doesn't seem to be any after effects.

 

[Bobby34231]

Hi and welcome to the forum, The only drawback that I know of concerning millet is that its not highly nutritional, it's not toxic whatsoever unless it was incorrectly stored or shipped and it somehow became moldy, its been used for more years than I can remember in aviculture, its very useful as an appetite enhancer, from getting baby birds to start the weaning process to getting ill birds to continue feeding, as stated, millet is not high in nutrients so it should only be given as treats and not as a mainstay of a birds diet otherwise the danger then would be malnutrition, so unless your fellow club members were referring to moldy millet being toxic they are incorrect.

If you read the packages to almost all seed diet mixtures, you'll see millet as one of the ingredients listed in all of them