Is this good for a cockatiel's diet?

[BozidarL]

After looking around internet sites for cockatiel diet, I decided to give my bird two main meals, one in the morning and one in the evening. I would like to give my bird a seed-vegetable mix in the morning, like a mash and seed-fruit mix in the evening. I wont put a lot of seeds, maybe just 15 - 20% so the bird eats more vegetables and fruits. I dont know if I should put some seeds throughout the day until the evening meal or what to do, but first Ill try to offer my bird some vegetables and fruits and hope she will eat them. Tell me what you think about this and what should I change.

[Pajarita]

I would not use fruits, they are not part of a tiel's natural diet (I put some there every morning but they don't eat it and that's fine). And I would use cooked whole grains instead of seeds for the breakfast meal (which would be more than enough for eating in the morning and leftover for all day picking) and then a good seed mix for dinner with no fruits or veggies. Tiels are granivores so you have to be careful not to give them too little.

[Wolf]

I really try hard to not tell a person what to do, although I do make suggestions. This is because I feel that their birds will be better taken care of if the owner will put the time required in studying about their specific species of bird, its natural environment, the foods that are available in that environment as well as when they are available, it habits as well as its social structure. Most of the suggestions that I make are of a general nature because there are some things that work regardless of the specific species of bird that we have and because with over 360 different species of parrots, I am many, many years away from knowing all of them and even further from knowing all of their specifics. And I don't kid myself into thinking that I will ever get close to that amount of information.
I am reading your posts and trying to respond in a manner that will help you to increase your own knowledge of your bird as well as your confidence in what you learn. It appears to me that I may need to change this approach for you. so if I were you I would start of by giving your cockatiel two different fresh, raw vegetables and a fresh raw leafy green such as kale and I would shred all of these and mix them together and serve them to the bird that way. I would also use different ones of each of these each day. Then I would cook and mix at least 4 different whole grains together and serve at room temperature with a good sprinkle of the present seed mix on top of it. I would serve this to my bird about an hour after giving it the fresh foods. I would also leave the fresh food in the cage along with the whole grains until dinner time. When the bird is eating the whole grains well than I would add some sweet corn to the whole grains and when it is eating this mix well then I would add some cooked carrots or sweet peas and so on until there are 5 or 6 different cooked vegetables in with the whole grains. I would then quit mixing seeds in this mix of whole grains and vegetables and add some cooked white beans and cooked lentils to it. I would remove all of this at dinner time and give the bird its normal seed mix for dinner and remove that when the bird goes to bed for the night.

[BozidarL]

Thanks Wolf. I will try this approach to my bird's new diet. Since she haven't been eating any raw vegetables I will do it like you said so my bird starts eating a variety of food.

[Wolf]

The reason for giving them the fresh produce at this time of the day is that it uses the birds natural rhythms to help get them to try these new foods. They just like many of us are hungriest first thing in the morning after not eating all night, because we were sleeping. It also helps to eat some of these vegetables in front of them during this time as for a parrot the sharing of food is both a social affair and a bonding activity.
Allow me to give you some insight into why this is necessary in the first place, according to my understanding of it.
A parrot is born into the world with a pretty much empty brain all primed for learning, which is a good thing due to the fact that its parents must teach it how to eat as well as how to drink. It must also over the course of its childhood, so to speak teach it what to eat and how to get its food. This initial teaching the young bird how to eat is what turns it into a bonding activity and then before puberty and after fledging while it parents are teaching it how to live in its flock the finding and sharing of food with the flock reinforces the bonding with the flock and add to it as a social event as it is done with the flock.
In captive birds very little of this occurs, although the parent birds are allowed to teach the baby bird how to eat and drink, the babies are ripped away from its parents to imprint on humans before the parents are allowed to teach it much of anything else. The humans then feed the baby bird a formula until the bird is old enough and its beak is hard and strong enough for it to begin to eat some of the smaller softer seeds to which it is weaned. Very few breeders care enough about these young birds to give them fresh foods at this time. Choosing to wean the birds to either seeds or pellets instead of a proper diet due to the expense of the healthy diet. This is left up to whoever purchases the baby bird to do. This information is not passed on to the person who buys the bird by the breeder or the sales person at the pet store and most new bird caregivers do not know that they need to do this. All of this means that you have to teach your bird to eat things that it does not recognize as food. The parents of the bird would teach the young bird what is food by eating the food in front of the baby bird and then sharing this food with it.
This is part of the reason that I encourage you to research the natural behaviors as well as the natural environment of your bird. This type of knowledge can greatly assist you in understanding your bird as well as helping you to know how to teach it what it needs to know in order to live with a human "flock".