FINCHforum

It has been 5 days and the little owls are not using the seed hopper, I have it placed near the seed bowls (in all the other finch cages also) but these little guys like sitting in their bowls. They like their cuttlebone/mineral block/oystershell in a low flat dish better than a cup (they will use the cup but love standing in a bowl eating it.

Today was cage cleaning day, I gave them a little millet and put a little piece in the tray area of the hopper hoping they would find it there and take the hint..."use this it has seed in it".

My husband is going to trim the oak tree out front and I will be exchanging the perches in all my cages with nice natural branches.

Oh and this is Louey, our little creamino lovebird...he was raised around big parrots that talked. He talks and says about 5 different things and is very tame, a real sweetie pie. He has picked up the Orange cheek beeps.

My Owls are among my more suspicious birds, very hesitant to try new things sometimes. Just keep on with what you are doing, they should start using it soon. One thing you can try is to take out all other seed dishes for short periods of time, then gradually lengthen the amount of time the other dishes are out of reach. They should eventually sample from the seed hopper.

Nice looking owls and your lovebird is adorable. I gave up years ago on feeders with catch trays, gravity feeds etc. My birds tend to just shovel the food out to get to thier favorite seed. I poor the catch tray back in and they immediately empty it again in search of favorites. I now just put shallow layers of seeds in more than nescasary containers......
I thought in my aviary I would hang outside feeders. Those darn parrot finches have already figure out how to empty them by getting it to swing. I sat and watch them about a week ago. They were flying and landing hard., sending the thing swinging. All the time spilling on the floor. Then they would jump down and pick out certain seeds then right back to spilling more. These little guys are smarter than you think. Thier reasoning is pretty good.

I don't use hoppers either. I hung one on the door and they don't touch it.

My birds pick out their favorite seeds from shallow dishes also. A mess, but ........

Some birds will take longer than others to get used to a new "scary" item in the cage/aviary. Yes keep putting a little piece of millet spray in the seed part of the hopper - but don't have millet spray anywhere else in the cage. Good idea to remove the other seed dishes periodically as described above for longer periods. When the seed dish is in the cage - keep it as close to the hopper as possible, even partly under the hopper so they can perch on the seed dish and see into the hopper tray. All my finches use the hoppers - I much rather empty the trays than have those shells/seeds all over the floor (even more than they are). Good luck!

I have a couple of seedhoppers too but my finches don't like them either. I still keep them in there and they use them occasionally but I wouldn't remove the other feed trays.

Your lovebird is so pretty!!

I checked in on them after I got back from running errands, they had pulled the millet off the little tray in the hopper and both pairs had it across the cage, there were some millet hulls in the little drawer. So they must be eating over it.

The St. Helenas have not touched it and my Goldbreasts and Orange cheek have one sitting right near the dish, they could care less.

I will leave it them in the cages for another couple of weeks. If they prefer their bowls it might be because they were given bowls and dishes of food previously. Maybe I can train their chicks (whenever that happens) to use the hoppers.

I think I would take out there regular seed dish at lights out,leave the seed hoppers. In the am just watch for a hour if they don't eat put seed back in

Bill, I noticed they all take a nap in the afternoon and feed after 6 again, I wonder if I take them out before they all go to feed, watch then instead of in the morning. I am better able to keep an eye on them after dinner.

I tried one of these seed hoppers as well... birds never used it.
I tried all of the different suggestions, putting millet near it (they just ate the millet), putting millet on top (they just pulled the millet off), etc., etc., - nothing ever worked.

So now it is a dust hopper!

cindy wrote:I checked in on them after I got back from running errands, they had pulled the millet off the little tray in the hopper and both pairs had it across the cage, there were some millet hulls in the little drawer.

This is EXACTLY what you are waiting for!! Keep stuffing the millet spay in and push it a little further back. Once they keep pulling it out - they will SEE the seeds behind the millet spray. That's EXCELLENT that you saw a few hulls in the drawer beneath!!

Just don't give up. You will notice more and more hulls in the drawer then in about 3-4 days you won't need to put the millet spray in the tray any more!! YAY!

If my Strawberries and Fire Finches can adapt - all finches can!

Can't hurt ,if that don't work I give up

Actually, when I changed to the seed hoppers, I removed all other feeders and watched them. They seemed to have found it quite quickly. Maybe I was just lucky.

This evening I noticed my male Orange cheek standing on top of it, bending over pecking at the seeds through the plastic. (he is always the first one in the bigger flight to investigate things)

Ok now just get on the step and eat the seed the right way!!!!

First I want to say....love your Owl photos...aren't they just the cutest finches ever?

Here is what worked for me when I was trying to get my finches to eat from the new hoppers because they were scared of the hoppers and wouldn't go near them at first either.

I used these little "D" cups they were eating out of already and hooked it up to the seed hopper.

They would eat out of the D cup and after a couple days I removed the yellow cup and by then they were used to going to the hopper and had no problem.