Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello all, it's been a long time since I have posted a question. I have two cockatiels and both are currently on a seed diet. I am trying to convert them to a pellet, namely the roodybush crumble pellet. I have removed all seed after they appeared to be eating the pellet. now they have stopped eating completely. The directions say to keep them with out seed for two days and monitor their droppings. I have been doing this but am afraid that this will be another failed attempt at converting them. Does anyone else have a good method? I have tried the mixing of the foods and slowly reomoving seed until it is only pellets. This didn't work. I have tried the instinctual approach by placing the seed food bowl lower on their cage and the pellet higher up to no success. Really want to convert them to pellet but at the same time I don't want them to starve!

Thanks for any advice/help.

Nick

I converted my bird (when she was a baby) from seeds to Kay-Tee Exact Rainbow pellets. I did it gradually, and it was successful. How old are your tiels? I've read that some tiels will never convert so you just have to stick with the seeds (it happened to a friend of mine). In this case, you might want to start try to supplementing their diets with good people food, such as vegetables and fruits. Although our tiel converted to pellets, I can't get her to eat veggies or fruit, she only likes junk food such as crackers, chips, etc. She also loves her millet. If I were you, I'd give it one more try with a different brand of pellet food.

>>Hello all, it's been a long time since I have posted a question. I have two cockatiels and both are currently on a seed diet. I am trying to convert them to a pellet, namely the roodybush crumble pellet. I have removed all seed after they appeared to be eating the pellet. now they have stopped eating completely. The directions say to keep them with out seed for two days and monitor their droppings. I have been doing this but am afraid that this will be another failed attempt at converting them. Does anyone else have a good method? I have tried the mixing of the foods and slowly reomoving seed until it is only pellets. This didn't work. I have tried the instinctual approach by placing the seed food bowl lower on their cage and the pellet higher up to no success. Really want to convert them to pellet but at the same time I don't want them to starve!
>>
>>Thanks for any advice/help.
>>
>>Nick

Convertions take an extremely long time with tiels. They're very fussy & hard to get to eat the stuff stuff most of the time.

A sudden diet change or even removing the seed after 2 weeks isn't recommended. It takes much longer than this time (upto months) before you can completely remove seed have them converted. A diet change as quickly as this can also cause some health problems so you need to be VERY persistant with this & do it slower than the instructions tell you.

Tiels are grassy, seed, leafy, vegggies, sprouty eaters so, try offering veggies as well as their seed sprouted. If you're unsuccessful with sprouting you can 24 hour soak seed. Both the sprout & soaked seed holds better nutrition than the dry seed. Add things like chilli, a fresh herb. They like flavour don't be afraid to experiment!
This website tells you one way you can sprout as well as some of the things you can add to sprouts or soaked seed:
http://eclectusextras.bravehost.com
You can also add things like sprouted mung beans & do things like soak your seed & beans in 100% juice, orange, carrot, berry, apple etc...