Getting Jello to eat Harrison's

[gabbagabbawill]

Jello, my Conure will eat pellets; in fact he seems to LOVE Zupreem fruit blends pellets. I recently purchased Harrision's High-Potency Coarse pellets for him, and though he has nibbled them, he won't eat them. I added the Zupreem to his bowl, and he gobbles it up and leaves all the Harrison's pellets alone. I tried to give him just Harrison's pellets and he won't he them when it's all that's in his bowl.

My Vet suggested the Harrison's bread to get him started but I don't have an oven to cook it in, so that's a no go for me...

Any suggestions here for getting a bird who likes Zupreem to convert?

Thanks!

[laducockatiel]

Hi,

My cockatiel is on Harrison's adult lifetime fine and he loves it!

I think that one of the reasons Ladu loved it so much, was because it is bitesize and it doesn't take a lot of time for him to eat it, and I think that's why your conure will not eat the coarse pellets. Birds tend to not like foods that are too big for them. I recommend that you purchase Harrison's lifetime fine/super fine for your conure and hopefully this will solve the problem.

Another way to get him to eat them is (if he is tame) feed them from your hand, you could even try breaking them up and hand feeding them to him, because he is a lot more likely to eat them when you are holding them.

I hope this helps and if you have any questions, feel free to ask me.

[gabbagabbawill]

Thanks for the suggestion. Jello does like to hold his food in his foot while eating, and he prefers larger chunks normally, which is why I got the coarse diet. In fact most of the pellets he readily eats are about the size of the coarse...

Before I switch to the fine or superfine, I will try breaking some up to see if it makes a difference. thanks!

[cml]

Birds tend to not like foods that are too big for them

This is not true with our little guy, he LOVES things that are too big for his beak, that way he gets to hold them with his feet and take bites! =)

[Cage Cleaner]

This is a nice coincidence. A month ago I switched my birds from Zupreem Fruit Blend (yuck, look at the ingredients) to Harrison's High-Potency Fine, mixed with Totally Organics Pellets.

To be quite honest, I think I'm going to buy the Coarse myself next time because the fine pellets are REALLY fine. They look like parakeet food to me. It does save a lot of waste, but they don't eat with their feet and I do feel that they didn't like it because of their size at the beginning. So, I think you are right on with getting the Coarse.

How long have you been trying to convert? It takes about a week to convert an older bird, and a few days at least to convert the younger ones like our Sun Conures.

My Sun Conure converted rather quickly, however. She immediately took to the Totally Organics Pellets, but took a few days for the Harrison's. I was told that Birds take to Totally Organics quickly because of its high quality, no-supplementation ingredients, and it was certainly the case here with my Sun. However, now that she is completely converted, she doesn't like the TOPs as much as the Harrisons.

I used the hand-feeding technique combined with the one listed in the site linked below. This is also the method I used to first convert her from seeds to Zupreem Pellets the first week that I got her. It is written to convert from seed to pellets, but of course it works for converting from pellets to better pellets, too. I will simply paste you the link as it is well written enough, here:

http://www.parrot-and-conure-world.com/ ... llets.html

My GCC took a while longer. He was resisting all my attempts at conversion, including hand-feeding, but I finally got him to do it my modeling it off my Sun Conure with this technique, combined with a reward system that he is familiar with already from trick training:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6587&p=44489&hilit=tricked+in+to+eating+harrison#p44489

Since I still have quite a bit of Zupreem left, I tried to feed it to both of them in half/half quantities, and they now no longer even want to touch that shit. I guess the know what's best for them.

Good luck!

[Cage Cleaner]

I think that one of the reasons Ladu loved it so much, was because it is bitesize and it doesn't take a lot of time for him to eat it, and I think that's why your conure will not eat the coarse pellets. Birds tend to not like foods that are too big for them. I recommend that you purchase Harrison's lifetime fine/super fine for your conure and hopefully this will solve the problem.

This is true of cockatiels, who do not hold food with their feet, and have a hard time with food that is too big for their beaks. It is different for conures.

[gabbagabbawill]

Cage Cleaner- great article in that link, thanks!

I will try the two bowl method... his usual bowl is already up high in the cage, so I'll put the Harrison's pellets in that and place another bowl lower in the cage with some Zupreem in it. I usually add some dried fruit and nuts to the mix, but maybe I should phase those out for a week or so to get him focused only on the pellets (he readily eats zupreem pellets).

And yes, I agree that conures prefer slightly larger chunks to the smaller bits, as they like something to hold on to. It would be nice if there were a harrison's pellet between the fine and coarse sizes, though.

[gabbagabbawill]

I'm hand feeding the harrison's pellets to Jello right now, and he seems to love it! Gonna keep trying this for a little while and see if he will go for it in the food bowl next time...

[Cage Cleaner]

I'm hand feeding the harrison's pellets to Jello right now, and he seems to love it! Gonna keep trying this for a little while and see if he will go for it in the food bowl next time...

Grab a handful, feed him a few, and make a huge show of throwing the rest into his food bowl as he watches. He should get the point.

[pfinarffle]

We had our Sennie on the coarse* Harrison's high potency to start with (he too was on the nasty fruity Zupreem stuff). Unfortunately, we soon realized he was picking out the little corn pieces from all the pellets and chucking everything except the corn bits. So we converted him to the high potency fine. Solved the preferential corn eating problem. If you feed the coarse* variety, make sure your bird eats the entire pellet.

edit: "coarse" not "course"