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Successful healthy food transitions.

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Successful healthy food transitions.

Postby Kathleen » Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:17 pm

If you ended up with a picky bird who refused to eat vegetables, fruits, and other foods, but you were able to transition them to these, how did you convert them? Or if you ended up with a seed-eating only bird and transitioned them to eating some pellets, how did you do it? What was your method?

Did you have to make several attempts at the transition or were you able to make a transition easily?

If however, you haven't been successful in these kinds of transitions, what went wrong? What unsuccessful method did you try?
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Re: Successful healthy food transitions.

Postby Mona » Thu Oct 01, 2009 10:51 am

Hi Kathleen:

I generally include the foods that I want the birds to eat in their food dishes along with the foods that they are familiar with. Of course, food is changed daily. It can take a week for them to decide to try the foods that they are not familiar with. If you think about it, in the wild, for many species, birds' diets will change with the seasons because the foods that are available change with the seasons.

Some days the birds are more interested in broccoli (for example) and other days they just toss it to the bottom of their cage. Generally, if I leave the food on the bottom of the cage for a day, they will go down and eat the food later. Broccoli is great because the stems and heads are very chewable (depending on what your bird prefers) and it is high in calcium. Some birds will go crazy over the heads of the broccoli and I have a male Senegal who makes compost out of the thick stems.

The best advice is to just keep putting the food in the cages with the bird, changing food daily and one day they will be interested. You can also set the food up as a foraging device. Many people use clips and clip veggies to the side of the cages for the birds to forage and play with during the day. I think this is particularly effective with parakeets and cockatiels.

Thanks for the question!
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Re: Successful healthy food transitions.

Postby Michael » Thu Oct 01, 2009 2:20 pm

Is it safe to let the birds eat the food off from the bottom of the cage though? On one hand I love giving my Senegal Parrot whole pieces of carrot or broccoli so she can fight with it as she breaks it up. It's not only more fun that way but keeps her occupied and healthy. However, because I worry about it landing on the grate if she drops it, I cut it just small enough that it would fall through the grate if dropped.

The reasons I worry about food not falling through the grate is because poop accumulates on the great and I'm worried about food getting contaminated from that. But even if the grate is clean, I worry that if the fresh food lays around there all day that it will spoil and if the bird comes back down to eat it (which I've seen her do) that it could get sick. What do you think?
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Re: Successful healthy food transitions.

Postby Mona » Thu Oct 01, 2009 4:21 pm

Hi Michael:

I put newspaper on the grate for Phinney. Greys have a tendency to toss their food out of their food dish looking for just their favorites, and then later going back to the newspaper and grazing on what they have dropped. I remove the newspaper and old food in the afternoon.

She doesn't poop on her food and if she did, I doubt she would eat it. A concern about spoilage is also why I like to feed raw foods. Raw vegetables won't spoil in a day in our climate (maybe Florida)...I don't feed cooked foods.

Same situation with the Senegals. If they poop on it, they don't eat it. I clean daily.

Thanks for asking about it!

Mona
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Re: Successful healthy food transitions.

Postby Michael » Thu Oct 01, 2009 5:12 pm

Kili would just chew the newspaper all day.

And my concern is that (even if the bird doesn't poop directly on the fallen food) that it would be laying on a grate that has made contact with poop (I only use chemical disinfectants really sparingly). The piece of food might not have poop all over it per say but it may have picked up harmful bacteria? Just my paranoia?

As for parrots and poop, I see both of mine step in it all the time! Also seen them beak it. Wouldn't say eat it but I saw Kili looking closely at one of Duke's dukies and bring her beak up to it!!! :cry:
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Re: Successful healthy food transitions.

Postby Natacha » Sun Oct 04, 2009 10:02 am

Mona wrote:The best advice is to just keep putting the food in the cages with the bird, changing food daily and one day they will be interested. You can also set the food up as a foraging device. Many people use clips and clip veggies to the side of the cages for the birds to forage and play with during the day. I think this is particularly effective with parakeets and cockatiels.


I think that is key; keep offering and maybe one day your bird will go for it.
Also, like Mona said, try different ways of offering it. From bowl to clips to foraging toys to the way the food is actually presented; i.e from whole chunk of it, to thinner slices, to julienne-style, to shredded...some birds don't like when food is offered too think whilst others don't like it too thin.

Show your bird that you are willing to eat it as well; my lovebird really started eating pellets when she saw my Sennie eating them and another one of my bird started eating more veggies when I ate them with him.
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Re: Successful healthy food transitions.

Postby Kathleen » Sun Oct 04, 2009 12:18 pm

I offered my budgie small pieces of different vegetables, and he didn't touch it. I could tell he was disappointed because he was excited when he saw the bowl going in, then he went over to it, hopped on it, looked in and then hopped off to another perch again. He was raised so poorly (like most budgies) that he didn't recognize anything as food except seeds. He wouldn't even eat bread. He'd run away from me if I offered it.

Then I tricked him a few months ago. I chose a vegetable that was kind of wet inside, carrots. I chopped it up and kept chopping and chopping until it was extremely, extremely fine pieces of carrot. The carrot pieces were a bit moist, and because of the cohesion properties of water, they stuck to some seeds that I poured in there and mixed around. I poured some in, mixed it, and then I poured a little bit more to tempt him. He ate the seeds and he ate the carrot alright. He couldn't avoid eating the carrot because it stuck to his beak and it stuck to the seeds. After that, I put more and more carrot, more and more of other vegetables, and each time, a little less seeds.

Now I can put in carrots, broccoli, and string beans cut up, not as finely as the first time but pretty finely) and he'll eat them, no seeds. I don't think he totally fills up on this, but he eats it. He just didn't know he could.


I've also tried apple, banana, and pepper but he doesn't seem to like those as much, I think carrot is his favorite so far.
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Re: Successful healthy food transitions.

Postby TheNzJessie » Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:58 am

when i was trying to get ym budgie to eat fruit i was getting fruit like orange and strawberry (juicy ones) and dipping them in some seed and hanging them up he was eating the seed off them and every day i would put less and less seed on it untill there was no seed at all

as my budgie doesn;t have seed in his diet exept for millet it was a treat and turned into being a treat and he ended up loving fruit
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Re: Successful healthy food transitions.

Postby TheNzJessie » Sat May 01, 2010 3:43 am

kathleen, how old was duke when you got him? and was he aviary raised, hand raised or just handled?
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