What is YOUR bird's diet?
Added 2021-11-28 15:52:47 +0000 UTCHey guys! As many of you know, we are working on a DIET CONVERSION COURSE which I think will be offered in both e-book/PDF download and video form. I would love to include some "diet conversion plans" for people to use as examples for creating their own based on what their bird's current poor diet consists of.
If your bird is already on our recommended seasonal feeding breakfast and our pellets in the evening then obviously you don't need a plan, haha... but if you started elsewhere (like an all seed diet, or a human food diet) could you please leave a comment on this post telling me where you started and what you did to successfully convert as well as how long it took you to get there?
I want people to have realistic expectations going into this. I also want to be able to create conversion plans based on your answers if you have not yet successfully converted your bird to the best diet.
Also, anything you want to make sure we cover in this course please leave a comment about so we can ensure this is well rounded information once it's complete. Thank you as always for your feedback in helping me shape our latest resources!
Comments
1 year +. Mango is a sun conure and was weaned onto seed and pellet mix, but she wouldn’t touch pellets. Luckily I had found you guys before bringing her home, so I was ready to start getting her to eat fresh food. It was really slow. About three months to get her to eat fresh food and also get her to go from eating colored pellets to uncolored during this time too. She was excited about freeze dried from another company and then after 6 months won’t touch it. I would say it was about 9 months until she was eating seasonal feeding on her own and then some Harrison pellets. In the early months would often have to sit with her to get her to eat the seasonal feeding otherwise if I put it in the cage, she would mostly hold out for seed. A little over a year, she was eating well enough that I don’t give her seed anymore except for training. Some set backs were when we had a pet sitter- she starved herself for 3 days and then became mean. I told the sitter to feed her whatever she wanted and then her behavior became normal within the day. That definitely stated the whole process over again. It’s been 1.5 years and she eats the seasonal feeding well and Harrison’s . I would say she isn’t excited about SFS, but she eats it most days. I do feel like she could slip back at any time. I have my sights set on your pellets, but she won’t eat them. Her behavior is very effected by not eating enough, so this also makes it slower. No one wants a hangry bird.
Suzanne Lindelli
2022-02-03 05:03:26 +0000 UTCSo I recently adopted a Galah.... Which in itself has been quite a ride. Long story short, I went for a business meeting at a friend of the family's house and he had a Galah there..which apparently got there through the means of a divorce (oddly). When I saw him I was like "wow, I've always wanted a Galah!" a few weeks later, the family decided to give it in adoption and trust his little feathery self in my hands. The previous owners told me that he ate quite well.. but when I met him he had a piece of bread and a tomato in his food bowl. 🙈😓 When he got home... he was in for a lot of change. And after watching most of you project bird videos... I kind of decided that he needed to learn quite early on that it was a new house with other birds and other rules. So I took away all of the plastic toys he had on his cage (after a deep clean), put up some of your natural toys I had (which my other two birds love) and served him your seasonal feeding system right away. I added a few sunflower seed pieces to the mix (which I was told were his favourites) to make it more enticing... and to my surprise he finished it straight away. My real struggle was the pellets. When I served them and he tried them for the first time, he actually took the bowl and threw it across the cage...which was hilarious. So I started mixing the seasonal feeding system with chunks of birdie bread (Bubba's mix was the winner) and eventually removed the seasonal feeding mix, and eventually started to mix the birdie bread with the pellets and eventually took the birdie bread away. The whole process lasted for about two weeks. He is now fully converted and actually likes the pellets as a treat now and then. Oddly enough he doesn't like fruits.... except for apples and blueberries which I feed about twice a month, as I personally don't use fruit as a treat. And that was it... Overall... watch and learn from Jamie
Andrea
2022-01-03 03:03:43 +0000 UTCMy CAG came to me from the breeder on a "24h access vet approved complete parrot food" diet - read: junk, with occasional fruits. He was 4 1/2 months old and uninterested in eating new stuff. He would, however, eat fruits and loved them. I gave him broccoli, carrots, different green leaves,... from time to time, but he would just tear those apart. In the meantime, I managed to get him to eat some coloured super scented pellets (the only ones available where I live. Back then I was like: what is online buying?!), so I took him of the complete junk and now he was eating a little less of a junk diet. As he was getting older (about 8 months), I realized this bird is going to be a problematic biter (huge part of that was how my ex "played" with him), so I started researching and found you guys on YouTube - Morgan series to be exact. My main goal was to train my bird, but through watching your videos, I realized I needed to start with the diet. I bought your cookbooks and TOP's organic pellets online (yes, I finally discovered ordering online XD ) and made my first SFS batch. Needless to say, Pablo was NOT diggin' it. I started weighing him every morning before breakfast and giving him SFS in the morning and a mix of coloured and TOP's pellets before bed. He wasn't eating the SFS nor TOP's and his weight was going down. I insisted on not giving him the junk mix anymore, so I used the coloured pellets to entice him to eat at least the SFS - crushed them and mixed them in. I hanged vegetable cabobs in his cage almost every day with a piece of fruit in between to entice him to get his beak into the healthy stuff. In the evenings I still gave him a mix of coloured and TOP's pellets. I often made those caterpillars from your cookbooks to get him to play with his food. With time, I was changing the coloured to TOP's pellets ratio for the evening meals. I was doing this for about 2-3 months - his weight was not perfectly stable, but good enough in my opinion. Now, he was eating mostly the TOP's pellets - I think he just caved and threw in the towel XD After that, I removed the coloured pellets from the SFS and sprinkled freshly squeezed orange juice over it, or mixed in pureed apples or bananas - he wasn't thrilled that all these veggies were in the way of his beloved fruits, but at least he ate some of the SFS without the coloured pellets mixed in. At some point, my mother gave him a piece of a hard boiled egg - that was THE MOMENT! I don't know how I missed it, or if it maybe wasn't in your older videos (this was about 3 years ago), but it never occurred to me to give the freakin' bird a hard boiled egg! I started mixing THE EGG into the SFS and it was smooth sailing after that - I put less and less egg in and Pablo didn't even notice. All in all, I would say it took me about 6 months of basically throwing away food to get Pablo to eat SFS in the morning and TOP's in the evening, nuts and seed for treats in between. We are still struggling a bit with the Summer recipe - I'd say every time Summer is in line, we have to retrain eating the SFS with the help of HRH Hard Boiled Egg :) Point is - never give up! These birds live for a very long time and should not spent their lives on parrot equivalent of junk food. P.S. I also have an Eastern Rosella - she eats everything you put in front of her. I wish ever bird would be like her! :)
Pablo The Congo African Grey
2021-12-10 14:54:59 +0000 UTCI have had various challenges and results having 7 parrots of 5 different species. I was lucky with most of them and the pellets as my two CAG and the amazon were previously on an only pellet diet so they switched pellet brands fairly quickly. The SFS was a little different and took some more time, they were offered fresh foods at their previous home occasionally so it was just convincing them that this was what they were getting for breakfast. My sun conure was very young when I got him and while I had not known about birdtricks SFS and pellets he was never offered a seed diet so just went right to it when we switched. My three cockatoos have been the most difficult the smaller goffins had been fed horrible diets with things such as straight bowls of sunflower seeds and cheez it crackers along with whatever junk food their owners might have been eating. They are picky on the texture of their SFS and will throw all of it on the floor if they deem it too "wet" or "mushy". My umbrella cockatoo, well he is a story for another day lol
Krystelle
2021-12-05 17:15:11 +0000 UTCAs for the pellets, Rocko absolutely LOVES the Bird Tricks pellets! No issues to report on getting him to eat the pellets, except not getting his pellets fast enough when I come home from work. Just to clarify, Rocko was a rehome from a family that inherited him. Unfortunately the family was terrified of him, which was the reason for the rehome. My two lovely friends raise parrot chicks for sale as well as do some rescue work. When they got him he was on an all seed diet. They helped in the conversion by getting him on a seed and pellet mix that was a healthier option than the previous diet. For them, Rocko hated junk food (ie pasta, chips, tortillas)😂 I thought my major conversion tool was completely gone until I discovered he actually loves pasta. He loves it so much I had to limit how much he gets in his SFS, by only giving him his SFS with pasta in it a few times a week. I use the 2 oz condiment portion cups when I made it. Only randomly putting in a pasta noodle in a cup. He still eats everything else and it has helped tremendously with his weight loss.
Heather Fromme
2021-12-01 06:10:07 +0000 UTCI was pretty fortunate with Rocko. He had no interest in the SFS at all until I found his preferred temperature lol. He likes his SFS partially frozen lol. In the early days before I found his preference I tried the hard boiled egg or sweet potato to entice him, he was like nah I ain’t eating that! Then after about a week, which is when I discovered his preference, is when we had a break through! He gets SOOOO excited to see his chop in the morning now.
Heather Fromme
2021-12-01 06:00:54 +0000 UTCBoth my Quakers came to me on an all-seed diet. Green Quaker - took her several weeks to convert to BT pellets and almost 3 months to actually finish her bowl of veggies (she began with cauliflower and slowly started eating different veg). With the pellets, she didn't really touch them the first week and then she would crumble them and not eat much but consumed more and more each day until she was eating them enthusiastically and would even forage for them. Albino Quaker - ate her SFS the first day I brought her home, but took her months to eat the pellets. She was on a budgie seed mix so anything bigger can safflower seeds was ignored. I crushed the pellets by pressing them under her food bowl and mixed them into her seed mix and she eventually started eating some a month later, the more she ate them, the less I crumbled them, until she just took a full pellet and crunched it herself.
Jennifer Perez
2021-12-01 03:48:06 +0000 UTCYour suggestions for adins to get them going on SFS were very valuable. Sweet potato obviously, but I have had to resort to creamed corn. No bird can resist creamed corn. For a baby bird converting to pellets, I've had really good luck serving the pellets like cereal with homemade cashew milk. So easy to whirl up a few cashews with water in a mini blender. Hard to resist not drinking it yourself though. Really tasty. The "milk" pellet mix has to be pulled within an hour. It spoils quickly and gets gross. Feeding outside of the cage, holding the bowl, or feeding with your hand works well with a lot of birds, especially young ones. Chunks of veggies on birdie skewers will usually get them to shred up the veggies. One thing I've run into a lot is regression even with older birds. I don't know what triggers is but they will suddenly backslide and refuse the healthy stuff. Even if they have been eating it fine for a very long time. I'd like it if you addressed this. Assuming it isn't just me. 😀
Holden Kendrick
2021-11-29 18:19:26 +0000 UTCI would say that the banana suggestion for my 9 yo B and G Macaw has been the answer. I saw a post wear Dave suggest switching old turkey, which to be honest was my initial thought. Another, thing needing to be address is for birds like mine who have had food 24/7, and went through withdrawal. She was crazy for about a week. This Saturday was the first day I felt she was content. I needed a bridge food between meals. Which would have been like tue birdy bread, but I am not a baker.
Shawn Petersen
2021-11-29 01:48:15 +0000 UTCI am still in the middle of my second conversion. The first was a Budgie, and Second I am in the middle of the Battle. I definitely think there needs to be some information. Birdstricks is extremely passionate and the Seasonal feeding system and pellets, it would be great to have a reference for ideas. The ladies who answer your emails have been helpful.
Shawn Petersen
2021-11-29 01:43:23 +0000 UTCMy first bird (sun conure)- they gave a seed mix with a dried fruit mix and said not to give an veggies or fruit for 2 weeks. The seed mix grew webs so i got zupreem fruit with some seeds in there and spent hrs taking out all the safflower seeds. Eventually going on to zupreem naturals than Harrison’s than your pellets. He refused all veggies so he was just eating your pellets for 6 months straight and I finally dove into your sfs and he took to it slowly. It took about 2 months. My black capped took to your sfs within a few days and was fully on it within a week. My hybrid conure- I tried using the same approach as my black capped but he was making baby noises and seemed really hungry all the time. He was eating your pellets but needed formula. Your diet took about 3 weeks. My 38yo plucky rescue grey- I’m at a loss here. He was on seeds for 38years. I gave him Harrison’s and he took to it. I tried roudy and your pellets but he refuses to eat them. He won’t let me weigh him unless I towel him so I’m nervous to change his diet without weighing him. Budgies- took to your seed mix immediately, they were on that junk seed.
Li
2021-11-28 21:36:55 +0000 UTCI just thought I would mention the best tip you gave was offering a new bird to your home the new diet right away. It worked pretty well with both birds I fostered. My 3 babies came on Roudy bush pellets only and they took to the feeding system really quick. I slowly changed their pellets and they did pretty good.
Wendy Cottingham
2021-11-28 17:58:35 +0000 UTCWe've been doing this BB addition for about 4 months. Oh, they didn't like BB at first either. I mixed a big batch then split it into smaller batches & added different things that I thought they might like. One used pumpkin puree, another seeds, and a couple others. Found the seed one they really dug into. Each time I make a batch I use less seeds.
Janene Gscuba
2021-11-28 16:21:30 +0000 UTCAll took to veggies pretty easily. Pet store Budgie was the hardest from an all seed diet. Took a couple months.
Janene Gscuba
2021-11-28 16:16:14 +0000 UTC2) pellets have been the hard one. They are eating most of the birdie bread but don't care for pellets. I've tried grinding up & putting in veggies too. Currently mixing in with other brand & using TOPS tiny bites because they won't touch the larger ones at all. Usually the TOPS are the only pellets left in the dish even if only given a small amount. Wondering if I only give birdie bread (I add a small amount of seeds in BB so they are interested) .
Janene Gscuba
2021-11-28 16:14:04 +0000 UTCMy cases are both converting from junk seed. I have one situation where the bird is coming from junk seed but likes some vegetables (whole), but won’t touch the SFS. The other is birds coming from junk seed and won’t touch anything non-seed.
Wabbitamy
2021-11-28 16:07:53 +0000 UTC1) fresh food conversion - started with clipping spinach & broccoli to the cage bars. I'd have them out when chopping up veggies which they were very interested. 1 bird especially interested in the shiny knife so I pre-chopped then let them out & pretended to cut.
Janene Gscuba
2021-11-28 16:06:41 +0000 UTC
