Getting Your Bird to Try New Foods

The Breakfast Dish
This is the best method for getting a seed junkie to try wet foods. First you have to find a soft food that your bird already likes. There is always something. Usually even picky birds can't resist wheat bread or a frozen veggie mix. With small species also try greens like parsley or carrot tops. Once you find a food other than seed that it will eat offer it the same time every day, in the same are of the cage, in the same dish. After a week or two of this start offering something else into the dish every other day. You can mix it together with the old food or just offer the new food by itself. Keep this up and pretty soon the bird should eat any item placed in that dish. Wet foods are used to supplement seed diets and can be sprinkled with vitamins a few times a week.

A Seperate Dish
Never mix pellets in with your birds seed (I know several pellet packages recommend this method of "conversion." It does not work.). Instead, offer the pellets in a completely different dish. Birds are more likely to try this new "toy" than something invading their seed bowl.

Tutoring
Birds follow the examples of their peers. If you have one bird that eats pellets you can usually get your others to do the same by letting them watch. Borrow a friend's bird to help teach yours if you have to. You can also try pretending to eat the pellets (you may actually have to eat them, some birds aren't fooled). Ever notice how pets always want what you're eating?

Looks Like Seed
Some brands of pellets, like Kaytee Exact cockatiel size, look a lot like seed. Other foods that have a seed-like consistency may be tried more readily, like wheat bread, cereal and sprouted seed. When trying to get your bird onto a different diet any food variety is important no matter how small.

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