Complete Psittacine by Eb Cravens
I have been told probably a hundred times by parrot owners that their psittacines will not eat vegetables. They just throw them out of the food bowl and waste them. I have heard this exclamation from pet parrot keepers very many times over the years.
It can be a real dilemma when trying to keep your bird or birds on a healthy nutritional diet, especially when one considers that vegetables are at least three or four times more critical to optimum psittacine nourishment than fruits. Add to that the fact that many fruits are very high in sugar content, one of the reasons wild hookbills often choose to eat unripe fruits or perhaps only the inside pips, and one can see that giving up on veggie feeding and substituting only fruit does not solve the issue.
That does not mean “I don’t like broccoli.” It means “I am going to go through the whole bowl and pick out the best and tastiest foods first. Broccoli is farther down my list.”