How do you get budgies to eat food besides seeds?
I have two budgies and all they seem to like eating is seeds. I want to feed them grapes and stuff but they don’t want to try them. I tried feeding them different treats by hand because I am trying to tame them but they wont try anything new. Should I not worry about it and just let them live off of seeds?
- Taylor B
pellets for bird’s are better.if you give your bird pellets instead of seeds the bird’s will be healthier and live longer..
give them potatoes,brocoli,if they don’t want to eat grapes then try something different to feed them.but don’t force them to eat it.buy pellets much much better for your bird’s..
Oh no, an all-seed diet is never right for a budgerigar or a cockatiel. But you will be surprised — you don’t have to work hard at all to introduce them to fruits and vegetables.
All there usually is to do is to leave a bit of the desired food wedged in an interesting place in the cage — somewhere where the birdies will (eventually, after they become comfortable with the strange object) curiously nibble on it. They should end up doing that and tasting it and enjoying it! (This could take weeks, perhaps even a couple of months, but at least there’s not much work to it.)
The only rules of thumb for food safety are to offer hopefully-organic, well-rinsed (of dirt and PESTICIDES, most important!) food, to make sure you have researched which foods are toxic and non-toxic (like chocolate and avocado — fatal to cockatiels, for instance) for your darlings, and to make sure you remove any food from the cage that can spoil within a few hours (so bacteria don’t build up; birds can catch many of the very same infections and viruses — even colds — that we humans do).
Also, there is parakeet/budgerigar kibble or nuggets or pellets which contain far more nutrition than (too fatty! — they can give the poor birds liver damage, if fed seed in excess) constant seeds. A completely nutritional budgerigar pellet is the most highly recommended thing to feed your bird — they should be offered these pellets in the largest amounts, aside from fresh food. Those, you would mix into their seed (since we do NOT want them to starve while they adapt!) maybe slowly if they need, until they recognize those as food, too. But, eventually, seed should be given mostly as a treat.
Just for whoever is skimming these Answers: None of us should keep our bird — no matter what kind — on a seed-only diet! They can live ten years less just from that (heartbreak!). They love to eat many kinds of table foods, and to eat with us, too — they bond to us through sharing meals “as a flock” (too adorable for words — you should see my cockatiel run to try to eat whatever I am!).
My sweet cockatiel, Kumo, now sits on this barred metal platform (great thing) I attached to the side of his cage and politely chirps when it is time for his corn or carrot or green beans! That’s great, since I don’t end up leaving the veggies around to spoil — he gets them fresh and digs in right away. SO CUTE — TO DIE FOR!
Good luck with the darling budgies… they are far smarter and more emotional than they ever do seem. They have the best Daddy in the making — !!!
Love,
Kumo, and his human, Jaxxy. =)
Budgies are very difficult to encourage to try new things unless you get them in the first few weeks of weaning. They are usually hungry first thing in the morning, so you can try removing their seed for 2-3 hours in the morning, and leaving them with their dish of fresh fruit or whatever it is you want them to try. Make sure you give them back their seed after a couple of hours though! You may have to do this every day for quite a while before they will even try the new food, so be prepared for a lot of waste.
Try different foods, with different textures, cabbage, carrots, nuts, dried fruit, fresh fruit, banana chips, you might get lucky and chance on one they like.
Good luck with it and keep trying, because seed alone is not adequate nutrition for any bird.
You should take the seeds out for a few hours and put in grapes,carrots, apples, pears, etc. After an hour or so put the seeds back in the cage.
Take out any dry fruits and throw them in the trash.
they are not that smart ( they think like 1-3 year old’s ) but if they catch on and understand that they will soon get their seeds back, you should take out the seeds for 2-3 hours and put in the fruits.
it will be fun for them to find the fruit if you kind of hid it in their cage.
such as behind a toy.
if they are use to the area where their seed food use to be, then take out a container and put the fruits in it. Then put it in the seeds old area.
i wish you well. : )
Budgies wont eat off of any layer of food but the first. If you put seeds in a bowl and than cover up the top layer with healthy foods, they will be more likely to eat them.
Carrots
Zuchini
Spinach
Grapes
Are all healthy foods
Alvocado
Dairy
Chocolate
Junk foods
Arnt healthy