I cooked acorn squash last night for dinner and now have a pile of seeds to dry roast. I know fleshy part of squash is safe for my cockatiels and conure, but what about the seeds?
Since I love to roast and eat pumpkin seeds, and I eat zucchini with seeds in all the time, I cannot imagine that any seeds of the squash family aren’t edible by humans and then why not be birds?
Incidentally the canard about rice and birds is just that, a canard.
Given that pumpkin seeds are perfectly edible to humans, and pumpkins are very closely related to acorn squash, I can’t imagine there would be a problem.
Why wouldn’t you eat them yourself? That’s the best part of the squash!
But yeah, if the flesh is safe (not too much vitamin A for them?) then I can’t see how the seeds could possibly hurt. It’s not like they’re one of those things you have to rinse/soak/blanch to get rid of toxins or alkaline crap.
With wild birds, if they will eat it, it’s safe. They won’t eat it if it isn’t. With pet birds, however, they may have had their “safe/not safe” instincts bred out of them. Check with your vet to be sure.
Parrots are flock animals. They enjoy sharing food with the rest of the flock, including the big pink featherless bipeds in the house. It’s a social bonding thing. So I like to know what they can have to share with us.
I also like to grow my own bird food. Can’t supply all their needs, but sunflower seeds and corn are two things they get from my garden, and various squash seeds would make a nice addition.
On top of that, they get to unwrap them! Oo, fun! Stuff they can pry apart without getting yelled at, AND there’s a nugget of goodness inside! Yep, they love their seeds…
Actually, the cockatiels won’t eat anything new unless they see us eat it first. They’re a little paranoid by nature.
Oh, no, not too much vitamin A - I think they have a higher requirement for it than humans do. Know all those bright reds, yellows, oranges, etc. in bird feathers? They need vitamin A and its relatives to make those in addition to using it for skin, eyes, etc.
As for toxicity - well, avocados are fine for humans, but deadly to parrots. Same for chocolate. We are different species, after all, and while we can share many foods in common we can’t share them all.