Diet and taming - Millet as a treat

[Miyavi]

Hey guys!

I'm getting my cockatiel in about two weeks, and I've been reading everything I can for some time now.

Today I paid a visit to a local pet store around my area, and I've been checking the fodder bags, when I realized all of them had millet included in them.
Now.. from what I've read, I'm going to use millet as a treat when taming my cockatiel, and I've read that if I'm going to do that, I should take millet away from its daily diet.

Does this mean I have to manually put away the millet seeds from the fodder? Or does this simply mean that I should not put millet sprays around the cage for my bird to eat whenever it wants?

I'm asking this because the shopkeeper told me that millet was a basic component in the diet of birds, so now I'm confused.

Sorry about the terms "fodder" and "millet sprays" if they're not used correctly, as English is not my native language, but I guess you get the picture


EDIT:

Now that you have determined your parrot's favorite treat, never serve it as part of the daily cage meals.

Okay.. so does this mean I should find a fodder without millet?

[Dave & Karen]

Millet is a very good training treat and it's also used for newly adopted birds that refuse to eat. Birds tend to love millet and will usually eat it when they refuse other foods. If you're going to use the millet as a training treat, that's fine and it's very effective for this purpose, as long as your bird eats his regular food you can take the millet out of the cage and use it only for training and taming. If there's a little bit in these fodder bags or treat bags etc, you can remove the big pieces, the small millet seeds that are still there is ok because they'll still apriciate you giving them a nice sized piece. I just break off a small clump off the spray and use that for teaching the birds new tricks, and it's also an excellent "peace offering" when taming and befriending a new bird as well.
Other good taming and training treats are the safflower seeds (the small white oval shaped ones) and sunflower seeds. The sunflower seeds have a real high fat content so they should be limited in their regular daily diet, but it's ok to offer a seed or 2 for a training or taming reward. But for the millet, as long as you limit how much of this he gets in his meals, it'll be very effective for taming and training.

[Miyavi]

Thanks! I guess I was worrying too much about that

I'll also try with different treats just in case.

[Dave & Karen]

No problem, Yeah, it's always good to give a variety of treats because even tho most birds will eat millet like it's going out of style, each bird is different and may like something else even better.

Treats I like to give are millet, raisins (most our birds prefer the golden raisins), pecans, walnuts, dried cherries, dried papaya chunks, sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, and hemp seeds... I usually put a few of each in a small bowl or on a paper plate and present it to the bird to see which treats he goes to the most, then I'll use the ones he prefers the most for the training reward for that bird.
If you can get some organic trail mixes that don't have chocolate in them, this will give you a nice variety of samples to try your bird out on since they usually contain a variety of seeds, raisins, and different dried fruits.

Other things to try are fresh broccoli, corn on the cob (either raw or steamed), yellow squash, zuccini, eggplant, freshly popped popcorn (no butter or salt), sweet peas, fresh or dried green beans, sweet potato, carrot slices, apple slices, banana (fresh slices or dried chips), fresh cherries, grapes, fresh coconut, fresh pineapple chunks, cooked rice, and cooked pasta. These are all birdie favorites, but they may like one thing and not the other so this takes some experimentation since each bird will have it's own preference when it comes to fresh or dried fruits and veggies. This stuff can also be added to their daily diet as well as be used as treats.

[Miyavi]

Yeah, I've seen before that test where you put several food into a bowl and let the bird pick up whatever it wants. It will eat its most favourite food, then the 2nd favourite, etc.