Getting my fussy baby cockatiel to eat his pellets!

[jessandbeaker]

Hi all,

Firstly I am new to birds and the forum, so excuse my ignorance in advance

My husband and I have a 13-week old cockatiel, Beaker. He was hand-raised in a family aviary and we've had him about 3 weeks. When we picked him up we asked about diet and his breeder recommended a seed mix and a pellet - we bought both the brands he was used to. However, he is seriously the pickiest eater in our house (which considering how fussy my hubby is, that's saying something!). He only eats his seeds. I have tried mixing pellets and seeds, just pellets, just pellets then just seeds, pretending to eat them myself...all sorts! The weird thing is I think he does recognise them as food, because I have seen him crunch on a pellet before...but literally once or twice, that's it. He also shows no interest in any fresh fruits or vegetables, although he's mad about plain popcorn and dry toast.

I want to get him used to the right diet as soon as possible and set up good habits early, but I also know he is still growing and I don't want him to be deprived. He lost weight last week, although he's put it back on now (through eating seeds!!), but my main concern is that he is getting enough to eat.

My current tactic is one recommended in a book and consists of: take his food out at night, pellets only in the morning (or with a tiny sprinkle of seeds on top), half a tablespoon of seeds or so in the same bowl in the evening for a couple of hours, then take the food out before bedtime. I know my husband feels bad cos he acts like he's being starved when he gets in from work

Anyone have any other tactics that worked? Should I even be worried at this stage given how little he is? Help!!

Thanks

J

[Eric&Rebecca]

Eddie (now 8-9 months) took a full 5 months to convert to pellets. He prefers to eat TOPS crumples because their softer, we tried him with god knows how many pellets! This only makes up around 20%-30% of his diet, the rest is seeds, fruit and veg. There is a lot of debate on how much of a smaller birds diet should be pellets but I prefer to have it that way as that was recommended by my avian vet. For larger birds this percentage would increase but for smaller birds it's not completely necessary in my opinion providing you are feeding fruit and veg as well as seeds.


With regards to starving him, he will do this, thus do not continue the cold turkey process for more than two days. I'm really not a fan of it personally and eventually we did it by methods 3 and 4 below.

1.) Serve the amount of seeds minus a 1/4. Replace this 1/4 with pellets and do this for a week. Then increase to one half seeds and one half pellets and so on

2.) Serve the seeds but put a layer of the pellets on top so he can't see the seeds. He will eat some of the pellets and hopefully like them

3.) Sprinkle some on the table and let him forage for them or give them to him like treats. Once he starts eating them it will be a lot easier. Also sprinkle them on his portions of fruit and veg for foraging.

4.) Let him have seeds in the morning but just for an hour... leave the pellets in all day and then let him have the seeds at night but again only for one hour. Separate bowls are necessary for this

5.) Try smaller pellets such as budgie size or a different type of pellets. He may genuinely not like the ones he is being fed. Also try to vary his fruit and veg because they will get bored eating the same thing everyday.

6.) Try Harrison's high potency mash. It's like a dry powder or can be mixed with water to make a paste. This new texture will probably be appealing to him being so young. Be sure NOT to leave this in the cage if it's wet as it will attract bacteria. OR you can use it dry sprinkled on the seeds

Things to remember:

It can take a LONG time to get cockatiels converted to pellets because they are extremely stubborn birds.

Weigh your bird to ensure he is still eating enough and not losing too much weight

Ensure that the bird gets adequate portions of fruit and veg. This is important for a tiel as they would eat this naturally and it helps them be accepting of new foods.

Ask for help from an avian vet

Be patient, this could take a LONG time.

Putting seeds and pellets in the same bowl is like putting cake and veggies in the same bowl for a toddler. They will eat the cake but not the veggies. Cockatiels are such picky eaters

Loads of people on this forum will be able to help you with this because they helped me with my cockatiel and he eats them now no problems.

[Eric&Rebecca]

Also try hand feeding the veggies and fruit... Eddie wouldn't touch anything but seeds when we first got him and now he eats almost everything! But it took us from 7 weeks old to 9 months to get him like this.

[jessandbeaker]

Thank you so much for the ideas, I will definitely give them a try! We're all a bit happier now we're not on the morning/night plan - although he's currently being the world's least effective PA and chewing up my work laptop like he never gets fed

[Eric&Rebecca]

Oh you just wait... he will be having the keys out, dropping them in awkward places, sitting on top of the cage and laughing.

He will chew on everything. They also bite things to test their stability so he's probably trying to stand on it.