Can Budgies (Parakeets) Eat Celery? (And Is It Beneficial?)

Celery, just like all vegetables, has incredible health benefits for us. Being rich in antioxidants and vitamins is just a couple of the qualities of celery, making it a food that we should definitely be incorporating into our diet.

With all these benefits in mind, it’s natural to think that celery would be a worthy addition to the diet of your pet budgie as well. That being said, this method of thinking doesn’t always hold as certain things that we eat safely can prove to be harmful to our budgie friends.

As a rule of thumb, always do your research before feeding your budgie something you haven’t before.

So, can budgies eat celery safely, and is it beneficial for them?

Budgies can eat both peeled celery stalks and celery leaves safely, and most of them enjoy doing so as well. As celery is mostly water, it’s a great source of hydration, vitamins, and antioxidants that comes with very few calories which you can easily add to the diet of your little friend.

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That being said, just as with everything else, it’s best to feed celery to your budgie in moderation to avoid the potential downsides that may come with adding too much celery to the diet of your little friend.

Feeding Celery to Your Budgie

As we have mentioned earlier, feeding celery to your budgie is completely safe as long as it’s done in moderation and with care.

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Here are a few things to look out for when you are feeding celery to your budgie to ensure that your little friend stays healthy.

Peel the celery stalk before feeding it to your budgie. The outer layer of celery contains “strings” made of fiber that may cause a severe health problem known as crop impaction in birds when ingested, where food gets stuck in the bird’s crop. Because of this, it’s vital to peel the outer layer of the celery off until you completely get rid of these strings. If you have never done this before, you can think of it as peeling the outer layer of a carrot, which can easily be done with the help of a vegetable peeler.
Don’t feed too much celery to your budgie. While celery has plenty of benefits for your budgie, it shouldn’t make up for the majority of its diet. A diet that consists of too much celery (and other vegetables or fruits) won’t provide all the nutrients your budgie needs, and therefore should only be a small part of the diet of your little friend. The high water content of celery can also cause your budgie to suffer from diarrhea, which is why it’s crucial to add dry foods such as pellets to the diet. As a rule of thumb, vegetables and fruits shouldn’t make up more than 30 percent of the diet.
Ensure that the celery you buy is organic and clean. Just like many other vegetables and fruits, celery can also contain quite a high amount of pesticides. As these harmful chemicals are highly dangerous to the health of your budgie, the celery you’re feeding your budgie mustn’t contain them. The best way to ensure that your celery doesn’t contain these chemicals is to buy organic, but if you don’t have access to organic vegetables, you can try methods such as soaking the celery in saltwater, cleaning it with a baking soda and water mixture, and peeling the outer layers off before feeding it to your little friend.
Ensure that the celery is fresh before feeding it to your budgie. As your budgie can easily get sick from bad food, you must make sure that the celery is fresh. While you can usually tell that celery is going bad by looking at it, the best thing to do to stay on the safe side is to buy it fresh and feed it to your budgie without it spending too much time in the fridge. As the body of your budgie can tolerate much less than your own body can, we recommend being twice as cautious when it comes to checking the freshness of the food that you will be feeding your budgie.

Benefits of Celery for Your Budgie

Let’s talk about a few of the benefits that your budgie gets from eating celery, as celery is a food that is quite packed in terms of beneficial nutrients.

Celery leaves contain vitamin A. As this vitamin isn’t present in common budgie food such as seeds, the addition of vegetables such as celery is crucial for the diet of your little friend. Deficiency of vitamin A can cause problems such as respiratory infections becoming more severe, thickening of the skin, flakiness of the feet, sneezing, and poor feather color.
Celery stems contain vitamins B1, B2, B6, B9. The B vitamins provide energy to your budgie and are especially important for budgies who are breeding.
Celery stems contain vitamin K. Vitamin K helps the blood of your budgie to clot, and its deficiency can cause internal and external bleeding. That being said, vitamin K deficiency is rarely observed in budgies as their intestines can produce this vitamin.
Celery stems contain vitamin C. Just like us, our little friends also require some vitamin C in their diet, as it helps them reduce stress and stay mentally healthy. As vitamin C is also something that isn’t found in regular bird food, such as seeds, your budgie must get it from vegetables and fruits.
Celery stems contain minerals and trace elements such as potassium, iron, magnesium, folic acid, and calcium. Lack of minerals and trace elements are commonly observed with budgies as their regular diet of seeds doesn’t contain them. While we don’t want to bore you with the details of what every single mineral and trace element does, we can tell you that they have a multitude of benefits ranging from strengthening the bones of your budgie to protecting your budgie from diseases. Ensuring that your budgie gets enough of these nutrients is especially important if it’s breeding, as breeding is usually taxing on the body of your little friend.

Getting Your Parakeet To Eat Celery

Parakeets usually enjoy eating both the stem and the leaves of celery without issue.

That being said, in the case that your little friend doesn’t feel like eating celery, here are some tricks you can use to get your parakeet to eat it.

Try giving the celery to your budgie as it is after peeling it. Some budgies enjoy eating the celery stalk as it is since it’s a fun activity for them to nibble at it. In this case, you won’t need to do anything else other than ensuring that the celery is clean before serving it.
Chop the celery stalk and the leaves into smaller pieces. If your budgie didn’t show interest in the celery stalk, chopping the celery into smaller pieces can be helpful at times and make it easier for your little friend to enjoy the food.
Try to feed the celery to your budgie with your hand. Considering that you offer treats to your budgie with your hand, you can trick your little friend into trying the celery with this method. As the biggest struggle of introducing new foods to budgies is to get them to try them for the first time and see if they like them, doing this will ease the process.
Mix the celery with the food that your budgie already enjoys. Try adding very finely chopped pieces of celery into foods such as seeds and pellets (or other vegetables and fruits that your budgie is used to) that your budgie already enjoys eating. This way, you will be able to mask the presence of the celery to a certain level where your budgie most likely will eat some without even noticing its existence.

Should You Remove the Celery Leaves?

We have noticed a lot of misinformation is circulating about feeding celery leaves to your budgie, with most sources claiming that budgies should never be eating the leaves.

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While we don’t know the root of this claim, we can tell you that there is nothing wrong with feeding celery leaves to your little friend. In fact, celery leaves contain vitamin A that is essential for your budgie to stay as healthy as possible.

With a quick search, you can find many owners feeding their budgies celery leaves without any issues, with some owners even stating that their budgie enjoys celery leaves more than the stem.

The bottom line is that you don’t need to remove the celery leaves before feeding the celery to your budgie. The leaves are safe to eat, enjoyed by most budgies, and contain nutrients that will keep your little friend healthy.

Wrapping Up

As long as you do it with care and moderation, feeding celery to your budgie is perfectly safe, and it also comes with plenty of nutritional benefits.

The most important things to look out for is to ensure that the celery you will be feeding is organic (free of pesticides), clean, and fresh, and to incorporate celery into the diet of your budgie in a way where it doesn’t make up the majority of the diet.

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