Lafeber diet

[Raellen]

Hi; I have two finches and I am hoping to add Lafeber's premium diet as a supplement to their seed diet. What's the best way to do that? Should I mix the pellet with the seed or serve it seperately. I'm afraid that if I serve it seperately, it would be ignored? They also get eggfood everyday, so one possibility is to mix it with the egg food? Any advice is welcome!

[EmilyHurd]

If it was me... (which I did the same thing a couple months ago, and now all my finches are mainly on the pellet Lafeber diet).

I would try to mix it in with their seed and in the egg food. There is also an article in the Finch Information Center on how to convert the birds to a pellet diet.

The way I got my finches on it, was to remove the seed and anything else to eat in the early AM, and only offered the pellets, in the same dish that I normally put their seed, and I pretty much forced them to eat it. I still offer seed sometimes tough.

[Sally]

When I started with Lafeber's, it came with directions on how to switch over from seed to pellets, and I generally followed those. I'm not sure just how long it took, but I went very slowly. First I put 2 dishes in each cage, one of seed and one of pellets. Then I started removing the seed dish each day, at first just for a couple of hours, then longer and longer. I kept watching to make sure each and every bird was eating some pellets before I removed the seed completely. Mine are all now on pellets, and the only seed they get is spray millet once a week, and sprouted seed once a week. So far, I am very happy with the pellets. I use TammyS's seed hoppers, and I have very little waste. I switched over to the seed hoppers the same way, though much faster--I put a dish of pellets on the floor right in front of the seed hoppers, then started removing the dish for periods each day. Within 3-4 days, they were eating out of the seed hoppers, so removed the dishes permanently. A note on the seed hoppers--my CBs had started sifting thru their seed, tossing it all over the place looking for their favorites, and they continued this behavior with the pellets. Now, most of what they toss goes in the catch tray, and I can just pour it back into the hopper!

I also have been able to cut way back on the supplements, as most of them are added to the pellets. I still have to provide iodine for the Gouldians. I think it is really important with a pellet diet to provide them with veggies, eggfood, etc., I rotate things thru the week. I am keeping watch on the birds for any changes, but so far, everyone looks and acts fine. I would hesitate to offer both seed and pellets as an everyday diet, myself.

[FLAMEonfire]

I use the Zupreem's fruit flavored diet all the time. This is on the same par as the Lafeber diet. What I do is ground it down and add it with my eggshells into their egg mix every morning. Also I sprinkle it very heavily on top of their food {not grounded but the nature way it comes}. This way it's right there before they get to the seed and it doesn't all go to the bottom of the food dish. The birds seem to love it. After I got them accustomed to it - then - and only then did I put some in a small dish and fed it to them by itself. That way they knew what it was. Now they eat it all by itself. I did find that mixing it in the egg is one way to assure that they ate it, because all my birds LOVE their eggs! I hope this helps, good luck, but I don't think you'll need it. It smells like fruit so they seem to go right to it!