When featherheads won't cooperate with dietary diversity

[Sojourner]

So I started dumping seed cups into a bowl and taking it outside to blow the hulls off, then put the seed back in the cage. And in very little time at all, I discovered the hard cold truth -

These guys reject almost everything in the seed mix.

They won't eat flax seed, red millet, rape seed, nyjer, anything remotely resembling a pellet, or the dried fruit chunks.

What they ARE eating:

White millet
Oats
Canary grass seed
Egg food (dry only)
Sunflower bits if I mix them with the egg food

They also get fresh greens and veggies and have been using the cuttlefish bone. I also put a good vitamin supplement in their water.

They will literally pick around everything else to extract just the seeds they want, and if I don't provide them with the seeds they want in plenty, they scold me angrily all day.

So I've given up on the "balanced" diet and won't be buying them any more fancy seed mixes. They just won't eat any of the fancy bits! I suppose I could try to force the issue by giving them the choice of eating the undesired seeds or starving - but who wants to do that???

I don't think this is a problem. Canary grass seed is actually a pretty high protein seed. Millet gets a bad rep for being high in fat, but the info I can find on it - admittedly based on nutritional info for white prose millet intended for human consumption - indicates that it is actually pretty LOW in fat. In fact, it turns out that a lot of bird fanciers just feed a 50/50 mix of the two.

Canary grass seed: 13% to 16% protein, 5% to 6% fat
White proso millet: 11% protein, 4% fat

They do eat these, but clearly prefer the other 2 seeds :
Oat groats: 21% protein, 9% fat
Sunflower: 17% protein, whopping 50% to 60% protein!!! I'd worry about that but they don't eat it much by itself. IF they do start chomping down on it in a big way, I might have to consider offering it only occasionally instead of as a free-feed daily item.

The finch mix sold in bulk by a local pet shop appears to be about 50/50 white millet and canary grass seed, with a few oat groats in the mix as well. Their budgie mix (going by memory because I'm out of it right now) appears to be about 50/50 white millet and oat groats. I can get 100% canary grass seed as well, not sure about the oat groats, but given they have no clear preference for the oat groats I just rely on what's already in the mixes.

Right now they're getting the fancy mix that I dumped into the 50/50 finch mix, canary grass seed, and budgie mix. They pick around the fancy bits, love on the plain canary grass seed, and will eat the occasional oat groat.

It's been my experience that if they will eat a seed at all to start with, they will gradually increase consumption of it as they become accustomed to it. Maybe that would eventually happen with flax seed offered alone as well but I've not tried it. I can pick some up from the bulk bins at a local grocery store and see if they will eat it, but they pick around it in the mix. I've not tried sesame seed or poppy seed. I'm not sure there's actually a good reason for offering such high-fat seeds to non-breeding birds, especially given the fact that the have access to and will occasionally actually eat the super-high fat sunflower seed. I'm not planning to try to introduce these seeds unless there is some reason to do so and I'm considering giving up on the sunflower seed - they're not THAT much higher in protein, apparently, than the canary grass seed and are lower in protein than the oat groats (if the human nutritional info I have holds for avians).

Also will continue offering the fresh foods and the egg food, vitamin supplementation, and the mineral stuff.

Does that sound OK?

[debbie276]

Unless your birds are in a large aviary or fly free in a room everyday you don't really want to give them fatty seeds. They will become over weight and then breeding will be affected.

[Sojourner]

These are NON-BREEDING birds. Plus I'm pretty sure at this point that they're both female. I don't want them to be fat obviously but affecting breeding is the least of my concerns, other than wanting them to never ever ever breed.

What do you consider to be a "high fat" seed, %age wise? Since I'm not intending to feed them high-fat seeds and may stop offering the sunflower seed altogether (they eat hardly any of it anyway), what do you find concerning about the seeds I DO plan to continue to offer, eg canary grass seed, white millet, and oat groats.

[Sojourner]

So what do you guys find that your birds are actually eating?

Mine continue to pick around all the unwanted bits in the fancy seed mix. My wild birds are not anywhere nearly as picky - the song sparrows happily eat all the finch rejects, LOL!

I had been ill for about a week at the beginning of the month - the day I posted this thread was pretty much the first time I was more or less up and about. So they hadn't had a bath or greens in that time. I put a bath in the cage for them and some spinach greens (their favorite, they pick at other things but love the spinach).

They promptly soaked the entire cage with their messy bathing antics, then devoured the spinach, one on either side, pecking as fast as they could, then the spinach stuffed little monsters cuddled up to sleep it off.

They seem to prefer spinach even to strawberries. The exact opposite of me, LOL!

Next up on the birdy smorgasbord: dried sweet potato. I make this for myself - long thin strips of sweet potato that I dry in the oven as topping for Thai food or just straight as a snack. No salt or anything added. I can put this in their feed cups and just leave it, whereas the fresh stuff gets icky before they really have much of a chance at it.

[Sally]

Sweet potato is supposed to be very good for birds, it will be interesting to see how they like it dried. It certainly would cut down on the mess.

[Sojourner]

Sweet potato is supposed to be very good for birds, it will be interesting to see how they like it dried. It certainly would cut down on the mess.

Also the whole "what the heck do I do with the rest of this big ol' sweet potato" dilemma, LOL!