Food Preferences of Captive Rose-ringed Parakeets: a Comparison of Two Methods:a Comparison of Two Methods

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Preference of captive Rose-ringed Parakeets Psittacula krameri for grains of sorghum, maize and rice was studied in multiple choice tests using two methods. The first method involved providing equal amount of three types of food daily to 15 individually caged parakeets. In the second method, the same parakeets were fasted overnight and then offered the three foods twice a day, for 1 h in the morning (10:00 to 11:00) and 1 h in the evening (15:00 to 16:00). Both methods provided similar results of food preference: parakeets consumed sorghum in significantly greater quantities than maize or rice, with no difference in the amounts of maize and rice consumed. Food preferences of individual parakeets in the two experiments were strongly correlated. This study suggests that the food deprivation method is better for studying food preferences since it requires much less time for researchers to sort unused food types. This method, however, would underestimate the daily food consumption because total consumption was significantly greater when food was available all day than when it was available for two one-hour periods. Parakeets in the food deprivation experiment consumed greater quantities of food in the evening feeding hour (6.85 g/bird) than in the morning feeding hour (3.92 bird).
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