From: rjg@umnstat.stat.umn.edu (Robert J. Granvin)
Subject: Re: "Hey, where's my food?"  Converting 'tiel to pellets
Organization: School of Statistics, University of Minnesota
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 20:28:46 GMT

In article <43957@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>, fairchil@helix.ucsd.edu (Kevin Fairchild) writes:
|> 
|> From fairchil Sun Jan 24 00:11:25 1993
|> To: /home/helix/fairchil/.article
|> 
|> 
|> We have been trying to convert our 9 month old female lutino to a pellet diet. 
|> It's been about two weeks now, and she still regards the pellets as a snack, a
|> pleasant diversion, but not really a staple food.  I started by letting her
|> play with some of the pellets, eating a bit, to get her used to them.  Then I
|> replaced her seed mixture with pellets (some of them crushed so she could eat
|> them better at first.)  She didn't really eat them at all the first few days,
|> so we gave her seeds a few hours later each day.  (She got her veggies and
|> fruits as usual, also.)  We have tried to reduce the proportion of seeds, but
|> she still won't eat the pellets as her main food.  Is there something else we
|> should be doing?  Will it just take more time, or is she never going to eat
|> these pellets?

Time, time, time, time, time.  And when you're done, more time.

But the payoff is worth it.

I've had my cockatiel for somewhere around 4 years now, having gotten her
as a baby hand raised.  I spent two years weening her off of sunflower
seeds alone, which is a good thing to ween them off of because of the fat
content.  Fortunately, she finally got away from those and actually has no
interest in them anymore.  If I'm forced to get seed with sunflower in it,
she actually picks them out (loves safflower now... :-)

But she was stuck on a solid-seed diet and would rather starve than try
anything else.  I worked at trying to mix in pellets, but she'd either just
reject the whole seed dish or work around them.  Of course, rejecting 
something new is _usually_ just typical Cockatiel pickiness, but it's
entirely possible that s/he simply doesn't like it.  In that case, no amount
of coaxing will ever work.  So I kept changing the mixtures, getting seed
from different sources - i.e., keep things very similar, yet changing (not
enough to be stressful or traumatic, but enough to keep the food dish
interesting).

Eventually I found a pellet she liked.  She accepts it equally along with
the most popular seed.

That was about 18 months ago.  Only now, literally, is she beginning to
accept vegetables - only certain ones, and finds fruit an occasional thing
to play with -- for 10 seconds.

The return has been dramatic, however, and IMHO, well worth the effort and
YEARS of frustration (hopefully your mileage will vary).

She was a bird subject to Giardia (though it appears a change of water source
resolved that problem - no evidence, though).  After that was taken care of,
she was not the best condition bird in the world.  You'd think she was quite
healthy and happy, but she had occasional night frights, her personality would
shift radically (without a medical reason), she'd sometimes be excessively
irritable, her protein and various blood counts were at best "marginal", she
was sometimes overweight, but always had too much fat content, etc.

In other words, she was in fair shape (better than most of us :-), but not
in good shape.

Just today I picked her up from an annual exam and weekend boarding while I
was out of town and her condition is now top ranked on all charts.  Her
weight is perfect, along with blood counts, disposition, happiness,
cheerfulness, etc.  The doctor who examined her (different from the regular
one), specifically came out to tell me that her feather condition is one
of the best she has ever seen on a cockatiel.

Of course, all that makes me feel well - the efforts to buy bottled water
for her exclusive use, removing/reducing the "bad" seeds, and incorporating 
a mixture of pellets were major, if not entirely, the causes behind her
dramatic improvement.  I can't put a lot of stock on the vegetable addition
yet, because it's still very difficult to entice her to eat any in 
quantity - all I can imagine is how much better she'll be when she finally
takes to them regularly.

Playing the "game" where you let her sit on and wander around the dinner
table does work eventually, too.  It'll take a while before she didn't
panic or get concerned about the alien landscape, but eventually she figured
out all that stuff was pretty much inanimate.  Then it was fun to play
around.  Finally, curiosity got the best of her and she HAD to find out
what all the fuss was about.  Eventually she started trying to sneak things
off the plates - just to see what we thought was so important.  So far, her
favorite plate foods are pasta.  She HATES picante sauce, though.  :-)

So yes, IMHO, it's worth the effort, even though it'll probably take a lot
longer than you expected or wanted to deal with it.

-- 
\\ Robert J. Granvin                                 User Services Specialist
// School of Statistics - University of Minnesota            rjg@stat.umn.edu
Newsgroups: rec.pets.birds