At present, there are no formal established standards for recommended vitamin dosages for psittacines. Most research in this area has been performed on chickens and may or may not have relevance for exotic birds. Therefore, vitamin use requires caution and common sense. Check with your avian veterinarian before you add vitamins to a well-balanced diet for your birds. Not only is the health of the individual bird dependent in great part upon a proper diet, but the fertility of eggs, the viability of the embryos and the health of future youngsters are dependent upon the basic good health of the two parent birds.
Different species require different diets.
It is incumbent upon the diet manager for the birds to research the needs of the species, and make every effort to provide companion birds and breeding birds with what they need. Providing manufactured pellets as an addition to the diet of psittacines is practiced by many bird breeders. Pellets are designed to provide as close to what is deemed to be a balanced diet for psittacines as possible. Extensive research was conducted at the University of California at Davis by Tom Roudybush, professor Dick Grau and their colleagues on the nutritional needs of psittacines. It is of interest that the studies carried out at UC Davis on the orange-winged Amazon diet during the breeding season indicated that the birds were more productive when fruits and vegetables were provided in addition to pellets.