FINCHforum

Can birds eat quick oats? Before cooking (dry)

Thanks!

yes my birds love rolled oats and steel cut oats dry.

Thank you!

This is a great question and good to know. I was thinking they could only have hulled whole oats. I always have steel cut oats on hand all year round.

for unhulled oats you can ask a feed store for oat groats (same thing as steel cut oats but dehulled and whole... they are dehulled and you can chop those for smaller species or leave the whole for hookbills and java. I have societies take a whole one, hold it against the perch with one foot and with their beak snap pieces off.

My guys love oats too!

I've tried both the whole ones and the steel cut. Some prefer the former and others prefer the latter.
Seems some like the "work" of dealing with the bigger pieces, while others prefer the smaller bits.

I've found that when introducing new foods, they seem to prefer tiny bits. Then once they're familiar, they're more apt to try the bigger chunks. (And actually seem to prefer them)

I used to cut up **everything** into tiny bits, but I got some larger birds last summer (cockatiels and budgies) and started leaving out chunks of various foods for the bigger birds and over time, the finches have come to prefer the bigger chunks of most foods. (Which is fine with me! It's less chopping and they don't "lose" the little bits through the floor grate or fling small bits across the room and onto the walls. Some foods are funny, like slices of cucumber. They eat out the centers, leaving perfect rings with just the skins left over!)
But with introducing new stuff, seems to work best if I chop up into tiny bits or opt for the smaller version, like steel cut oats.

I discovered a fondness for rolled oats when I offered a bowl of mealworms in oat bedding. The spice finches and parakeets went after the worms. The societies ate all the bedding.

I haven't tried offering oats.
I do have a bag full left over from my failed mealworms experiment.
So is it ok, to just put some on a plate to see what they do with them?

Elana