Pellets and Veggies

A few pics to show the things that are working. First one is broccoli with seeds tucked down inside. He loves the enrichment of figuring out how to get them out. He also ends up eating some of the broccoli in the process. The second one is what the fruity pellets look like after the coffee grinder. The third is small tomatoes with seed and then the pellet flour on top. He spends time finding all the seeds and doesn’t mind getting the pellet flour and some of the veggies. Enough to have some green in his poops! On top of this he will still nibble his pellets in between so I’m so happy he will eat some willingly.




Wanted to add, I wasn’t able to get him near any vegetable until I stopped putting seed in his bowl and only put it on veggies as his only choice. Suddenly he was perfectly fine exploring any new veggie as long as its covered in seed!! And I put the seed on sparingly too. He doesn’t care will eat around or on anything to get that seed.

Love it!!! Since I have "thieving ways, " I do believe I'm going to steel some of your ideas 😊. LoVey seems to feel a whole veggie is a budgie eating monster lol. It's got me to wondering if I could use a corkscrew as an auger to hollow out a carrot... it would have to be a fat carrot to avoid giving myself a stigmata lol. Or (now I'm getting excited), roll some seeds in a kale leaf, like the way they used to roll a cigarette on Gunsmoke. I might try your "cookie" idea using cooked sweet potato as the binder. I wonder how easily a tiny pepper could be split and filled with birdy delicacies, hmm. I'll be looking at veggies from a whole new perspective! I am fortunate that LoVey will try to eat anything I seem to be enjoying, but I love learning diggerent ways to offer foods for the sake of variety! Thank you so much for the ideas!

karenblodgett3261 said:

Love it!!! Since I have "thieving ways, " I do believe I'm going to steel some of your ideas 😊. LoVey seems to feel a whole veggie is a budgie eating monster lol. It's got me to wondering if I could use a corkscrew as an auger to hollow out a carrot... it would have to be a fat carrot to avoid giving myself a stigmata lol. Or (now I'm getting excited), roll some seeds in a kale leaf, like the way they used to roll a cigarette on Gunsmoke. I might try your "cookie" idea using cooked sweet potato as the binder. I wonder how easily a tiny pepper could be split and filled with birdy delicacies, hmm. I'll be looking at veggies from a whole new perspective! I am fortunate that LoVey will try to eat anything I seem to be enjoying, but I love learning diggerent ways to offer foods for the sake of variety! Thank you so much for the ideas!

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Mine would not try or even get near ANY veggie until I stopped giving him seeds at all - unless he was willing to eat them off of some kind of veggie.

As soon as there were no seeds ever in his bowl anymore....oh but look! There's some seeds on that slimy scary thing (tomato) and he's all over that! Suddenly he wasn't afraid of anything if it was between him and his seeds. So that's when I started making sure that even then, he had to dig them out of the veggie to get them all, plus they have pellet flour sprinkled on them as well.

Now he can't wait for his veggie snacks! Purely only because they have seeds on them, but hey whatever it takes! He doesn't care how big the veggies are, but in order to reduce waste I do get tiny zucchini, tiny tomatoes, cut small pieces of broccoli, etc. The zucchini in the pic above are only about the size of my finger.

If you roll some seed in kale leaf, what will most likely happen is that the leaf will pop open almost immediately, the seeds will spill out, and he won't even up eating any of the leaf. So far I have not found a way to push seed into any leafy veggie in a way that makes him have to eat some. Peppers are nice because even though I can't really push the seeds into them, they are shaped like a little boat for the seeds if you cut them right and just by continuing to peck at the same area, he does get a little of the pepper.

Good luck and happy veggies for all!

Now he can't wait for his veggie snacks! Purely only because they have seeds on them, but hey whatever it takes! He doesn't care how big the veggies are, but in order to reduce waste I do get tiny zucchini, tiny tomatoes, cut small pieces of broccoli, etc. The zucchini in the pic above are only about the size of my finger.
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I was thinking how funny it is how we all have to try so many different things to find out what will work best for our birds🙃
Figaro quite quickly took to sprouts and chop, and LOVES both more than seed or pellets. But he is terrified of any whole veggies or fruit🤣 I mean this bird is bothered by nothing, he is so brave, until it comes to whole veggies! So when I read this the other day I really wanted to give it a try with him so I just used a circle of cucumber hollowed out a bit and put seed in it- when I carefully and slowly put it in his cage he freaked out like I was trying to kill him and flew out onto my head😂 I mean really!, these crazy little birds sure have their own likes and dislikes! I guess he doesn’t like seed enough to feel like it’s worth risking his life with the vicious whole veggies🤷‍♀️ Oh well, at least he eats lots of veg as long as it’s chopped up.
I still love all the creative ways you’ve come up with to get sweety to eat veggies😀

Figaro22 said:

Now he can't wait for his veggie snacks! Purely only because they have seeds on them, but hey whatever it takes! He doesn't care how big the veggies are, but in order to reduce waste I do get tiny zucchini, tiny tomatoes, cut small pieces of broccoli, etc. The zucchini in the pic above are only about the size of my finger.

Click to expand...

I was thinking how funny it is how we all have to try so many different things to find out what will work best for our birds🙃
Figaro quite quickly took to sprouts and chop, and LOVES both more than seed or pellets. But he is terrified of any whole veggies or fruit🤣 I mean this bird is bothered by nothing, he is so brave, until it comes to whole veggies! So when I read this the other day I really wanted to give it a try with him so I just used a circle of cucumber hollowed out a bit and put seed in it- when I carefully and slowly put it in his cage he freaked out like I was trying to kill him and flew out onto my head😂 I mean really!, these crazy little birds sure have their own likes and dislikes! I guess he doesn’t like seed enough to feel like it’s worth risking his life with the vicious whole veggies🤷‍♀️ Oh well, at least he eats lots of veg as long as it’s chopped up.
I still love all the creative ways you’ve come up with to get sweety to eat veggies😀
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I do understand and there are still things that would freak him out if I put them in his cage. All of the veggies were slowly rolled out and tested by him. Very slowly!

But again, the only reason he’s willing to get near any of the veggies is because he has no other route to seed. And because his total daily seed is so rationed. Before I put him on such a seed restriction he was literally afraid of everything. Took the seed bucket away and he suddenly became like those wild birds you see in videos eating from some human hand in the forest. Not afraid of anything!! As long as checking out anything might lead him to seeds.



At this point he’s fearless and will go get the seeds anywhere I put them, inside or outside his cage, on any object, veggies, surfaces, anywhere. Because like the road runner, he now knows he can escape any kind of trap.

I do wish he would eat chop and veggies on their own merit! And fingers crossed that out of my experiments I’ll find some veggies that he eats even without seed on them. For now gently forcing the veggies and pellet dust on him (through his love of seed) plus seeing him wlllingly eat some pellets sometimes…I’m just so happy he’s getting better overall nutrition.