Cockatiel Only Eats Sunflower Seeds

[Hyac1nth]

Hi,

I got my male cockatiel, Pikachu, just a little over a week ago now. I feed him the Hagen premium bird seed mix sold on Amazon, as that’s the same brand of seed mix his previous owner used to feed him and I didn’t want to change it up too much in case he doesn’t eat anything. This seed mix has sunflower seeds, legumes, and fruits in it. Problem is, he will only pick out the sunflower seeds and eat those but not touch anything else. I don’t want to feed him too much sunflower seeds because I know they’re fatty but I’m afraid if I stop giving him sunflower seeds he will not eat anything else and die. He is afraid of my hands, I tried offering food in my palm before but he panics and goes to the corner of the cage and shakes.

What can I do? Please help!

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum and sorry I did not reply sooner -had trouble with computer. First of all and regardless what you were told by the previous owner, tiels are no supposed to be free-fed seeds. They should have a 'seed' dinner but it needs to be a good quality budgie mis with some small pieces of walnuts. You can also give him some other sort of nut, but walnuts have the best omegas ratio,

I would strongly suggest you switch him to glooo and raw produce for breakfast and all day picking and the budgie/nut mix just for dinner because, if he has been eating mainly seeds all along, his liver and kidneys might already be compromised (you don't say how long he has been eating the bad seed mix) but, in the meantime, pick all the sunflower seeds off the mix.