by Wolf » Wed Aug 10, 2016 7:39 am
Your bird is really going to need to learn to eat a much wider variety of foods than just sunflower seeds and apples or it is going to end up getting sick from malnutrition, or some other diseases like liver disease, kidney failure or heart disease. Part of your job is to teach this bird what to eat, every parrot in the world, in the wild learns this from its parents. The ones that grow up in captivity have to learn it from their human caregiver. Parrots will nearly always want to eat what you are eating, although it may take many attempts at getting them to try a new food, if you keep trying, the bird will begin to eat more of the foods that it sees you eating. They also learn to eat new foods by eating with their flock as the sharing of food in the flock is a social event as well as a bonding activity.
As for the seed mix that you have, I would begin by removing most of the sunflower seeds from it and putting them aside for training purposes and letting him learn to eat the seed mix. This will help to improve his diet but an all seed diet is still not a good diet for any parrot and just getting him to eat them will not prevent him from falling victim to any of the diseases that I have already mentioned.
I would prepare a couple of different fruits and vegetable for him each morning before he gets anything else to eat. I would cut a small amount into strips and enough for all day into small pieces for him to eat on all day long. I would then sit with him and start nibbling on the strips of fruits and vegetables while he is watching you eat them. While you eat them you should make noises that tell him just how wonderful these foods are. At this time I would not offer any of them to him and I would make him work at getting the smallest of bites of these foods ( this is how his parents would have done this). They would make him steal a piece of the food, they would make it easy for him to steal it, but still make him want it enough to steal it. It does not matter if he actually eats it at this time or if he spits it out. Then I would leave the dish of fruits and vegetables where he can have it all day long. Then for now, I would let him have the seed mix and fill his crop with that and then put the seeds away, let him eat the raw fruits and vegetables during the day and then feed him the seed mix again for his dinner and again put what he does not eat away so he will be hungry in the morning when you offer him fresh raw produce again. Once he begins to eat these foods I would then start adding some partly cooked whole grains to the morning seed mix. and mixing it half and half and then leaving that for him to eat all day along with the produce. Gradually add more different whole grains and vegetables to the morning seed mix while reducing the amount of the seeds until their are no seeds in the morning feedings. Then I would start adding a small amount of fully cooked lentils and fully cooked navy beans to the morning mix. This is the homemade food that we call gloop here on this forum. This is what I feed all of my birds. Fresh raw produce and gloop in the mornings and for all day and then a seed mix in the evening.
All of my birds have cages, but I still would not worry about how long it takes to get your bird to eat a healthy diet, it is going to take some time and with a single bird living cage free it may take longer than it takes for my birds and I do this every day and have done so for the last four years, I just consider it as an ongoing part of giving them good care. It is also a bonding period for us. This is one of the most beneficial things that you can start doing for your bird at this time.