Now that my lovebird has settled into his new home, I've decided that it's time to switch his seed-based diet to a pellet-based one.
My pellet of choice is currently Harrisons (it's organic, and I like that), and my husband and I picked up our first bag of their High-Potency formula a last week. I got the super-fine size because I figured that it would be easier to disguise, but my lovie is not falling for it.
Since I've transitioned birds before, I figured that I knew what I was in for but Cassette has other plans. Whenever I mix the pellets with his seed, he pays no attention to the pellets and scavenges around for the seed. The result is a bowl full of empty sunflower shells, millet droppings, and un-touched pellets. Now I've wasted over three tablespoons worth of the pellets and I'm pretty frustrated.
Today I attempted to restrict his diet further, as my original approach was getting no results. I put only a tiny, tiny bit of seed in with much more pellet but came up empty handed again EXCEPT I noticed that he had wet the pellets in not only his water bowl, but his bathing tub as well. So, I decided to wet down his pellets a bit and try again. At first, I left them still pretty dry and added a little bit of raspberries. He played with the mixture some and showed interest (it was obvious he was hungry) but quickly moved on. Then, I wet the pellets even more (they're basically a baby-food consistency) and added a bit of seed and a bit more dry pellet. He's eating this right now and seems to be enjoying the wet mixture more than just seed alone... so I'm going to consider this progress. Even though he's technically only eating the seeds, he is getting the taste of the new food and I'm hoping that will make him get used to it.
My current plan is to feed him the wet mixture twice a day and only offer him pellets in between meals. Slowly but surely, I will start replacing the seed in the mixture with drier pellets and hopefully I'll end up at a place where he's eating only dry pellets.
I am wondering how slowly I should do this, though. On average, how long does it take a bird to convert to an all-pellet diet?
Does anyone else have any advice or two-cents? Please don't be shy! Share your knowledge with me!