Grape stems as enrichment

After a protracted move to Portland (Oregon), I’m back to writing about parrots.

Unlike most of my articles, this one is entirely anecdotal, supported only by my own experience and a handful of people who I’ve told about this.

We have three cockatiels who are not big fruit eaters. So when we put out grapes one day and they dashed towards them, we were surprised.

Turned out they wanted the stems and could care less about the grapes. They LOVE grape stems. They love to shred them to bits until they are just a bunch of fibers.

Given I used to have chickens that loved grape leaves, fruit, and stems, I should’ve tried them with parrots.

I brought it up to our local bird rescue and no one had ever tried giving them to their birds. I heard back from a number of people that said their birds also loved them. They would be occupied for 10-15 minutes at a time, which is a great attention span.

There are so many options for enrichment and many of them are free. Try adding grape stems to your arsenal.