Food Color Preferance?

[kaylayuh]

Do your birds prefer a certain color of food over another?

I've noticed my budgies are more likely to at least nibble something that is beige colored, like multi-grain Cheerios. If I put foods in there that aren't beige colored, they ignore it and won't go near it.

Today is the first day I tried giving them Cheerios, and they're actually at the food dish pushing them around. I'm not going to get too hopeful right now, but I'd venture a guess and say they're nibbling them too, considering that I can see two sitting on the table under their food dish.

I've noticed if I try multicolored foods, they will completely ignore them for the neutral colored seed. They won't touch sunflower seeds in the hull because they're a dark color. They ignored Zupreem pellets that were multicolored in favor of, again, the more neutral colored seeds. Even when taking the seeds out of the cage, they'd still ignore all other food sources.

The local pet store suggested that I remove all food sources from their cage and starve them until they eat pellets. I don't want to do this because it seems cruel and I'm sure that they're wary of something new in their cage that they don't recognize as being edible.

How did you all convert your birds to a healthier diet? About how long did it take? And in the case that they refuse pellets, are there some great beige colored fruits and vegetables that would be a good suggestion?

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Persistence sometimes seems to help!

A lot of people recommend the cold-turkey approach, but unless you weigh the birds daily during that time period, they can starve without your realizing it. There are a number of threads on different ways to attempt pellet conversion, you might want to search thorugh.

Beige-colored veggies, eh? Unforunately, those tend to have fewer vitamins than their bright counterparts, but you could try cauliflower, parsnip, turnip, white corn, some winter squash. You can also peel summer squash and radish, apple, pear, light-fleshed melon, but again that reduces the nutritional value. Might let you get 'em started though.