Not Feeding Well ?

[bomber11]

hey all

Since the first day I brought my senegal parrot home , it doesn't seem to eat any food other than sun flower seeds , gave'em apple , cucumber , grape , but still won't eat these things,,,

it's okay with me but I guess the parrot should have a good diet with food varying from seeds to fruits & vegetables,,,

so what do you think ? & is it normal if the parrot sticks with one type of diet?

[Kathleen]

In the store you got it from, what was it eating? Pellets? Seeds?

[bomber11]

it was eatin seeds , sun flower seeds to be more specific

[Natacha]

Well then he'll have to get used to a new diet.
Sadly, converting isn't always easy and won't happen overnight.
Continue to offer fresh food; it took mine a bit to get used to them and actually want to eat them, but they all did try them in the end. Just need to be consistent about offering them.

Also, offer a bowl of pellets. Some are better than others though.
You could probably start with the fruity Zupreem; they aren't the best, but birds do seem to take to them easily and once he eats that, you could always convert to other pellets.
Mine get some Zupreem Avian Entrées Spicy blend, Harrison, Roudybush and they get some Hagen Tropican in the seed mix they get.
I would stay away from any pellets from Kaytee.

Also, try to find a seed mix that is low in sunflower seeds or doesn't have any altogether. Sunflower seeds are incredibly fattening and shouldn't be the main part of their diet.

[Kathleen]

it sounds like your bird was really poorly raised..... It's so much better when birds are weened to eat pellets.

Eating seeds all of the time would probably be the equivalent of eating something like only potatoes for every meal for the rest of your life. It tastes good, it's a very concentrated source of calories, but it's bad for you in the long term.

I've tried converting my budgie to pellets twice and it just didn't happen, but I'm going to keep trying.

There are a few methods to converting. Usually the package of pellets talks about a conversion method where you put some seeds and some pellets, and every meal you slowly increase the amount of pellets and decrease the amount of seeds.. this only works if your bird is actually eating the pellets. If they're not, they're just going to become extremely underweight and they don't really offer an alternative for converting them.

Before you start converting your bird, you had better go and find a scale to weigh your bird.

I would get 2 different kinds of pellets and try both of them. Your bird may like one or the other.


As for feeding fruits and vegetables, check out this topic: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5
I talked about how I convereted my budgie to eating brocolli, carrots, and string beans.

[Michael]

One problem with pellet conversions is that as long as you continue providing enough seeds it will eat the seeds and not the pellets. A couple nifty tricks to try are to withhold seeds a few hours or in the morning provide pellets only for a few hours without seeds and see if it might see some out of hunger. Of course if not, you'll have to mix some seeds into the pellets. I suggest putting in a lot of pellets and a little seeds so that it really has to go through the pellets to get to the seeds. The other thing is to start training the parrot tricks and once it is used to doing tricks, you can sneak pellets and other healthy foods in as treats for tricks. The bird gets so used to eating what you give as treat for doing a trick that it gets suckered into trying new foods that way. Don't overdo it though or it will stop trusting the foods you offer as treats.