Pellet food for Red throated conure?

[c_faith]

My bird is currently on Kaytee Exact rainbow food pellets. Is this good enough? Lately I've felt like there's a healthier pelleted food I could be giving him but I'm unsure of what to look for in bird foods. I'd like to stay away from too many seeds, I give those as treats only.

I know birds need a variety of foods & different fresh vegetables but he will not eat vegetables at all. I've tried a number of different vegetables as well as leaving them in his cage to eat, he doesn't even like tomatos or carrots, he'll only eat fruits.

If his Kaytee food is good for him, I'll just keep him on that & other foods, but if there's another pellet food that could be better, or if anyone knows what to look for in pellets, let me know please!

[Wolf]

Hi ;
Welcome to the forum and to the world of parrots. You like so many others have come up to the formidable wall of veggies. There could be thousands of books written on this and all can be summarized with the single statement My bird will not eat its veggies.
Like the rest of us you will need to be creative in the presentation of your birds veggies. Each veggie will have it very own method of preparation that will be acceptable and even then it will have to be offered many, many times in each of it forms. You have raw, cooked sliced and diced. You have large pieces and small pieces, and you have mashed and shredded. Sometimes the only way to get them to eat them is to disguise them in things like homemade birdie bread or cookies.
Pellets are not the best food for a bird, it is not a thing that they find in the wild, but that is only a small part of why they are not as good for them as real food. Pellets were invented for those people who didn't want to go through the hassle of finding ways to get their bird to eat their veggies ( only partially true), or didn't know what to feed their bird and/ or just couldn't find the time to address the birds dietary requirements. Pellets are to birds like fast foods are to us, while they can have a place in the diet they are neither the best nor required, they are, however, convenient and easy to use. The only thing further I have to say about them is to avoid the pretty colored ones like the plague.
The getting your bird to eat its veggies is very much the same as all other things parrot, it always boils down to patience, patience, patience and when you are at your wits end the only thing that will save the day and/ or your sanity is patience, patience, patience and more patience. If you get tired or bored with that you can always start all over again with patience.

[Pajarita]

Wolf is 100% correct. Kaytee Rainbow is actually not a good pellet, the birds love them but it's only because of the sugar content in them. Now, conures are fruit eaters in the wild so they will always like fruits better than veggies but they do learn to eat their veggies and, some veggies they adore (like corn on the cob, sweet peas, cooked and diced carrots, butternut squash and sweet potatoes). The trick to switching them to a better diet is presentation and timing. As Wolf said, it takes experimentation to find what and how they like best and this means throwing out a lot of good food for a long time but there is no help for it. As to timing, this is done utilizing birds natural biorhythms (they are hungriest in the morning) and 'programming' (they are hard-wired to gorge on protein) so, what you need to do is give the bird the healthy food in the morning after taking out of the cage the protein food the night before so he will be good and hungry and more receptive to trying new foods (you should also eat his breakfast with him and make a big production of the HMMMM and Yummy). I always recommend gloop, which is what I feed my birds because, in my personal opinion and experience, it's the best medium to deliver a good diet without hardship to the bird, but chop or mash will work, too. Gloop is a dish made out of cooked whole grains, pulses and cooked and chopped veggies. Mine has wheat, kamut, barley, oats, Basmati brown rice and/or black rice and/or red rice and/or wild rice, lentils, small white beans, flax and sesame seed, yellow or white sweet corn, peas, white hominy corn, carrots, broccoli and/or kale, butternut squash, green beans, sweet potatoes and one more ingredient which varies from batch to batch, it could be beets, it could be artichoke hearts, it could be palm hearts, it could be pigeon peas, etc This becomes the 'basic' recipe which I freeze in individual baggies with one daily portion in each. Every pm, I take out one baggy out of the freezer and leave it out to thaw and, in the morning, I add flavorings to it (raw veggies, naturally dried and unsulfured fruit bits, spices, etc). There is a product called 7 whole grains pilaf from Kashi that you can cook following directions and then add the veggies and stuff to make it easier on yourself. If you give your bird a measured portion (enough to fill its crop) of its protein food in the evening (I would recommend a good quality seed mix or TOPs, if you want to go the pellet route) when the sun is setting and take out the bowl once he goes to sleep and, in the morning, give him the gloop with a small sprinkle of seeds or pellets mixed in, he will start eating veggies. It will take some time but, because you will be still feeding him seeds or pellets in the evening (don't switch the pellets until he is eating the gloop in the morning unless you are going to go with the seed mix), he won't starve and, eventually, he will start eating the seeds or pellets mixed with the gloop and, in the process, he will taste it and, because you are supposed to cook the grains al dente (very firm and retaining the shape) which resembles seeds, he will start eating the grains. As time goes by, he will start trying the veggies (start with adding just corn, then when he is eating the corn, add peas, when he is eating the corn and the peas, add the carrots, see what I mean?) and, eventually, he will eat almost the whole thing (they, like people, have likes and dislikes).