Foraging issues

[Tro]

I'm trying to switch my bird to foraging for ALL of his food, to keep him entertained and mentally stimultated throughout the day while I'm working. I bought the DVD "captive foraging" which is what really convinced me to try the foraging feeding technique for my bird. The problem is he is terrible at foraging and nowhere near ready to be left at home to forage, because i dont know if he would get any food. I was wondering if anyone had any very elementary foraging ideas.

A couple things I tried:
I bought him a creative foraging system kit for small birds but the card board seems to be to tough for him to tear through, has anybody had simular issues with this foraging kit and GCC? Another thing that I'v tried is placing paper over his food bowl with a whole in it, but he trys to tear the paper up from the edge and it doesnt work. I think he's under the impression that it comes up from the edge, because before I taped the paper down to the bowl I let him simply lift it off and get the food and he lifted it from the edge. I sit down with him and show him but he's to excited to pay attention, all he wants is to see what's inside and is trying to tear through from his side while I try to show him from my side where to tear haha. Any advice and tips would be helpful! Thanks for reading.

[marie83]

I don't think there is any need to give all the food through foraging. I split my birds daily allowence into 3 portions. Morning feed, foraging toys and evening feed. This means I can still keep a close eye on intake and they are not going hungry if they cannot get a bit of food but they are still hungry enough to be motivated to try. Anything left in the toys at the end of the day gets put into the evening feed.

I think your GCC will get the hang of it, just keep showing him, use his favorite foods to start with to get him motivated, leave the box open to start with and gradually make it harder. I've got no idea what the boxes are like that you are using but small snack fruit boxes hung up with leather strips work well for me. It took months for Ollie to get the idea that he can tear it up.

With covering his food bowl, why don't you try just securing the paper at one side to start with or putting extra/bigger holes in it. As he gets used yo it you can start making it harder by reducing the holes or size of the holes or securing the paper a bit more each time.

[laducockatiel]

Also, try to make your own foraging toys for him. Foragingforparrots.com has a lot of good ideas for making your own foraging toys for parrots and in my opinion, they prefer homemade toys to shop bought toys.

[Tro]

Foragingforparrots.com has a lot of good ideas for making your own foraging toys

thanks this helps.
And thanks for the advise. My bird has access to his pellets all day long. He only has breakfast of fruits and veggies which he eats at the table with me, I know this isn't advised but he goes in and out of his cage just fine so I don't have a problem letting him eat breakfast with me I think he enjoys it. So his fruits and veggies he wouldn't have to forage for. His main diet of pellets I would like him to learn to forage for. The main goal here is to give him something to do while I'm at work. So I could take the food out of the foragers at night after I get home so he has easy access to it while we are relaxing, he would be more interested in enjoying his out of cage time anyway. and I also have a avian scale so need to worry that he is going to starve to death without me knowing because I keep close tabs on his weight.