Budgie will only eat pellets if I hand feed him?

Hello, i’ve been trying to get my budgie jax to eat pellets for a few weeks now. He has been eating the Healthy Select Seed mix forever, (and when we got him from the petco last year we were told that’s what he was eating as well). A few weeks ago, our vet had told us to switch from seeds to pellets and we bought Harrison’s pellets. Jax hated it.

We tried gradually decreasing the amount of seeds and increasing the amount of pellets for four weeks but all he did was pick out the seeds and completely ignore the pellets. When it was the fourth week and I had to give him mostly pellets, he would go in and kick out all the food.

HOWEVER, we decided to get a new brand of pellets and got the Zupreem Fruit Blend pellets instead. They’re colorful and vary in shapes, (and they smell great).

At first Jax didn’t like it but then I decided to crush them up. I crumbled some into a fine powder and left some ones that were broken in half. When I put this in my hand, Jax instantly went to eat it and he loves it!

The only problem is….he’s only eating these pellets from my HAND, and when I put these same broken, crushed up pellets into his food bowl, he doesn’t even touch it. He just stood there and whenever he saw me and he was hungry, he practically BEGGED me for seeds because that’s all he wants to eat from his bowl. He was running around and following me wherever I was, making a ton of noise to ask for some seeds.

I even made a paste by mixing the pellets with water and tried that mash as others have suggested, with no luck. I had to give in and put seeds in his food bowl because he was literally starving himself when the pellets were in there.

So I have a budgie that will ONLY eat pellets if they’re in my hand. I don’t know why. I even physically show him and move the pellets from my hand into his food bowl, so that he can see that it’s the same thing. Still won’t budge.