Parrots are among the most intelligent pets that you can own, so training is an absolutely vital part of their care.
An untrained parrot can be a nightmare to handle in a dozen different ways, so when you are training you want to know that you’ve got the best tools for the job.
Today, we’re going to look at a wide selection of training treats that you can use when training your African grey parrot to ensure you get the best results and that you and your bird are happy for many years to come.
Let’s jump into it.
| Our Award | Name | Image | Check Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best Overall | Kaytee Food From The Wild Natural Pet Bird Snack Food Treats |   |
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| Best Premium | Kaytee Mango Flavored Yogurt Dipped Papaya Treats |   |
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| Best Value | Vitakraft Fresh Super Fruit Cocktail |   |
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Best overall: Kaytee Food From The Wild Natural Pet Bird Snack Food Treats
Starting off with our pick for the best overall choice for training treats for African greys, we have these Kaytee natural pet bird snack treats.
These treats tick all the boxes in terms of what you could want from your training treats.
They are excellent value for money while also providing top-quality ingredients and freshness.
You won’t have to break the bank for them, but at the same time, you aren’t cutting corners in standards to save a few bucks.
The treats comprise a few simple ingredients: shelled pistachios and various dried fruits and vegetables like banana, pineapple, bell pepper, chili pepper, and finally dried pot marigold.
This provides excellent balance and healthiness in the treats while keeping them fresh and interesting so that your African grey will still be excited to eat them and it will definitely act as positive reinforcement during training.
The snacks are fully natural, with no added sugars, fillers, or artificial preservatives of any kind.
You can rest assured that your parrot is getting a balanced snack profile that isn’t artificially enhanced with any potentially harmful chemicals or additives.
The dried ingredients retain all of their natural healthiness and, perhaps more importantly, their great taste that will make them so appealing as a training treat.
Parrots are intelligent animals and no matter how you spin it, training is going to take time and persistence—but with these treats, you give yourself the best, healthiest, and the most affordable options for training rewards.
They are designed for large birds like African greys, too, so you know you’re getting exactly the right tool for the job when it comes to training your African grey.
With the right patience and persistence, these training treats will be your best friend in getting your African grey to the point of being fully and comprehensively trained.
At the price point, you really can’t go wrong with these treats.
- Highly affordable option, while at the same time retaining the high-quality ingredients and crafting of a more premium option.
- Simple but balanced ingredients that your African grey will love and will help speed up the training process.
- No artificial ingredients or additives in the treats so you don’t have to worry about what you’re giving your bird.
- Somewhat small quantity of treats in the bag, meaning that while cheaper you may get through them quite quickly.
- Some report that the treats often arrive broken up into smaller chunks making them less appealing to their parrots.
Summary
Doubtless, then, you’ve at the very least got a great starting point with these training treats for your African grey.
They are varied and yet simple enough that you can easily work out which your African grey likes the most and potentially move on to something more specified later on in the training process.
At the same time, they are diverse enough that depending on the individual personality of your particular bird, you may find that these are the only treats they need for their whole training process—all the while being among the most affordable options on this list.
If you’re looking for something a bit more on the fancy side, then these mango flavored yogurt dipped papaya treats are our pick for the best premium option for your African grey’s training treats.
These treats are highly popular both as training treats and simply as general everyday treats for a variety of large and small parrots.
As you may have guessed, they are made up primarily of papaya, dipped in yogurt for that extra flavour and nutrition.
Your African grey is sure to love these treats and again this will be enormously helpful for the training process.
There are a variety of other ingredients used to add extra nutrition to these papaya treats, including sources of vitamin C as well as soybean oil, whey powder, and citric acid, all of which are great for your African grey’s health.
These are fantastic all-purpose treats but they will work great as training rewards and your African grey will quickly pick up on what it is doing right.
They are also small enough that you can really easily regulate exactly how much they are getting; this makes them great for giving continuous small rewards during training without making your bird full.
Training, again, is never a simple or easy process.
But if you’re willing and able to spend the extra money on these premium treats, then you’re giving yourself just about the best possible leg-up that you could.
These simple treats pack nutrition and flavour and your African grey will go mad for them—but it’s also smart enough to know what it needs to do to get them. again, this kind of positive reinforcement is one of the simplest and yet most effective ways of training your parrot up and helping them to understand when it is doing the right thing.
The resealable bag will also help keep the treats fresh so that you can keep coming back to train the parrot day after day without losing any quality in the treats you’re giving them.
Kaytee as a brand are industry leaders, and their wide range of products covers all budgets and purposes; we believe these mango flavored yogurt dipped papaya treats are among the best treats you can use for the training process.
- Among the best quality training treats you can get for African greys and just about any parrot, tasting great while also being incredibly high in nutrition.
- Simple ingredients while at the same time covering a wide range of bases when it comes to your bird’s health, like vitamin C and protein.
- Industry leading brand assures that you’re getting quality and freshness every single time.
- Expensive compared with other options which could make the training process a more costly one.
- With only one main ingredient, if your bird happens not to have the taste for it, then you may have to go with something else.
- Smaller chunks can be an advantage but does mean you need to regulate portion sizes each time.
Summary
So, again, there’s no denying that this is among the more expensive options on the list and while the price may not seem astronomically different, it will add up somewhat over time.
If you’re willing to spend the extra money, though, then you can rest assured you’re getting the best quality on the market with these papaya treats.
They will make a fantastic training partner and will speed up the process immeasurably, making it a much quicker and easier way to train your African grey.
Best budget: Vitakraft Fresh Super Fruit Cocktail
There are also plenty of options on the market for those on more of a budget that still provides excellent quality training treats for your African greys.
The Vitakraft fresh super fruit cocktail makes a great option for those who want to save a bit of money while not cutting corners to make the product cheaper.
These treats are still perfect for training your African grey and the blend and variety will mean there’s always something in there that your parrot will love.
There is a good variety, but at the same time the ingredients are simple so you always know what you’re getting.
In this blend, you’ll find peanuts, dried fruits like banana, pineapple, and papaya, as well as vegetables like peas, carrots, and red peppers.
So, you’ve got indulgent tropical fruits blended with vegetables and nuts to make sure your bird never gets bored.
They are suitable for all life stages of your African grey, too, so you can use these for training at any age in your parrot’s life.
Again, the smaller sizes of many of the ingredients mean you can well regulate the portions you are giving them per reward, too.
At the same time, there are whole peanuts for that extra bit of reward and enrichment from breaking them open.
Portions are always a really important part of training reinforcement, and so this blend gives you a variety of options for treating your parrot depending on the circumstances.
All this while being by far the most affordable option on this list.
It comes in large quantities of around 20 ounces but again that resealable bag means you can guarantee freshness for a long period of time.
You won’t have to replace this because it won’t spoil!
This blend is packed with the vitamins and minerals your parrot needs, so not only is it great for positive reinforcement during training, but it’s also a nutritionally complete snack that will have broader positive effects on your bird’s health.
So, you’ll get a better trained bird and all the while it will be getting healthier for the treats you’re using to train it!
At the price of these treats, you really can’t go wrong.
- The most affordable option on this list, but that doesn’t mean that these treats are lacking quality in any way.
- Extremely nutritional and tasty blend of fruits that make it a healthy and well balanced source of many important vitamins and minerals for your African grey.
- Pellet form makes it easy to give in whatever quantities you need for the kind of training you’re doing at a given time.
- Not always as popular as some more premium options for parrot treats according to some owners, as African greys can be very individual in their tastes.
- Larger bag size may be less advantageous if you want to try a lot of different things at first, as you’ll have to purchase a large amount.
Summary
So, again, just because this option is on the more affordable side doesn’t mean you’re getting anything less than quality product.
This blend provides a wide range of ingredients and your African grey is bound to love some of them, while at the same time being nutritionally rich and complete to make your bird’s training experience also a healthy one.
If you’re looking to save money on a great product, this could be the option for you.
Another good premium option if you’ve got money to spend is this Higgins Sunburst blend of exotic fruits.
This is certainly a more expensive option on our list, but again you are certainly getting serious quality and you get what you pay for.
This particular blend is ideal for young adults, so it’s great for exactly that stage when training is most important.
This is a mix of dried fruits like bananas, raisins, and many others.
Once again you have a good mixed blend in smaller chunks making it easy to break up into bigger or smaller reward portions for training as you need to.
There are no artificial colors or flavors so you’re getting an all-natural blend, and yet the mix is incredibly colorful and attractive so your African grey is bound to be excited just looking at this mix.
It will make a great reward system for positive reinforcement in training.
It’s specifically designed for the bigger varieties of parrots, too, such as your African grey, so you’re getting the best, most specific tool for the job.
Because this blend is just fruit, too, it makes it easier to divide up and give specific rewards for specific things.
A broader blend is of course great for lots of reasons, but at the same time, specific rewards can come to be associated with specific actions and behaviors for your African grey.
This means that a specific fruit blend can be even more helpful in the training process because the reward system is much more specific.
This is among the most popular choices on Amazon for a larger parrot treat food, with many glowing reviews suggesting that even the pickiest of parrots loved eating this snack blend.
It can often be a challenge to find the right snack for our picky parrots, but this blend certainly has something that any parrot will love and you can again rest assured that you are only getting the best of the best in terms of quality.
It will arrive fresh and visually appealing, so your African grey will not be able to contain their excitement at this food.
With the money to spend, this may make one of the best options for training treats for African greys available on the market today.
- Best quality treats available with fresh, unaltered ingredients providing great taste and motivation in a reward system while also being nutritionally dense.
- Fresh and visually appealing in terms of color which will make your African grey always ready to earn its next treat.
- Specifically formulated for young adults making it great for early stages training, though it can also work great for any age of parrot.
- The most expensive option on the list and perhaps prohibitively so for even moderate budgets.
Summary
Without a doubt, then, if you’ve got money burning a hole in your pocket, this could be the best option for your parrot treats.
They are fresh, tasty, and visually appealing, ticking every box needed for a great African grey training treat.
Being specially formulated for the time in a parrot’s life when training is most important, this again may be the single best option out there for a training treat for an African grey—since most report their parrots almost universally love it!
Alternative budget: Kaytee Healthy Bits Treats
Looking at another budget option, then, next, we have another from Kaytee: the Healthy Bits Treats.
It’s similar in price to our other budget option while coming with a few of its own specific benefits and advantages that may make it another great choice for your African grey.
These healthy bits are specially prepared into small chunks that again make them very easy to portion up and you can give your African grey one at a time in the same amount each time without needing to think about portion sizes.
The healthy bits treats are made up of a blend of many different ingredients to provide the best range of nutritional benefits as well as tasting great and being a fun, exciting treat to break up.
They are made up of sunflower seeds, peanuts, cracked corn, oat groats, hulled millet, grass seed, safflower seed, wheat, ground corn, and many other ingredients for a hugely balanced and varied treat in a tiny package.
They are tasty and nutritious, giving you the best of both worlds.
They will increase the variety and stimulation in your bird’s diet which will combat boredom, which is always an important part of the training process.
African greys are smart—they will get fed up of repetitive training quickly without the right rewards!
All of this, too, comes in such an affordable package that you can always have these on hand for your African grey’s training.
Having a variety of different training treats, as opposed to simply the same formula every time, can also be a great way to ensure that your African grey is focused on the training and is learning from it rather than simply going through the motions.
Again with the resealable bag you can keep these in the cupboard for a long time without ever needing to worry about them spoiling.
Even if you’re not on a budget, these bits are a great thing to have on hand as again you may never know exactly what kinds of treats your particular African grey prefers.
This is another great choice for a budget training treat for your African grey.
- Highly affordable while providing the same premium quality as some of the more expensive options on this list, making it among the best choices.
- Incredible variety of ingredients that provide exciting and fun snacks for your birds ensuring that even the pickiest individuals will find something to like.
- Nutritionally complete as a snack as well as being great for positive reinforcement in training.
- Condensed into single chunks which could mean if your parrot is especially picky, they will not eat anything from this mix as they are all the same chunks.
- Some report African greys in particular do like these treats but often prefer other options.
Summary
So, if you’re looking for something that’s on a more reasonable budget while also retaining some of the best quality in the market, then these healthy bits are certainly a great option for you.
They are among the most affordable choices on this list while still packing just about everything you could imagine into such a small package.
They are bite sized and portioned up already meaning they make a great option for something you can handfeed to your parrot when the training is going well.
Whether you’re on a budget or not, these are a great option to have on hand.