FINCHforum

The two, from different breeders, have been in their new home for almost 3 weeks now.

They will eat millet, and some seed, but they dont touch the egg food, shell, or corn I put in there.

I tried putting it on a plate on the bottom of the aviary, I tried putting it in a small cup on the mesh, finally I put the small cup today at the end of their favorite perch and they did look into it, but didnt eat anything.

I did find the egg shell on the floor later on though, so they musta at least bit into it once. I saw some pics of someone who left huge chunks of shell for their finches and I thought I'd try it as opposed to always chopping it up.

They seem healthy and a bit bored. It is just the two of em in the big aviary. Likely wont get em any friends until the 22nd.

any thoughts?

They dont sit too close until their light goes off, then they cuddle up real close.

thanks!

Michael

I found that if gouldians have not been given those foods before, they will ignore it. They will only eat it if there are other birds in the cage eating it, then they will copy the other bird and eat.

You can leave it out, and "eventually" they may try it and decide that it is food.

The other way is the method in the FIC for introducing new food.
http://www.finchinfo.com/diet/introducing_new_foods.php

One of the tricks that I did was to put seeds into the egg/veggie mix. They go for the seeds, and along the way they will "try" the egg and veggie.

don't give up.

It can take a bird up to two months to really warm up to new foods.
My advice would be to ditch the corn - it's really not all that nutritious, it's basically just a sugary starch/carb.

You are better off trying something like fresh sprouted seed (there are quite a few threads on here explaining how to do it properly).

Also - how are you offering the egg?
I found that 1. Some of my pairs will eat fresh egg and others will not, they prefer the commercial varieties, and 2. The pairs that will eat it, will only eat it if it is prepared a specific way, which is:

Taking the hard boiled eggs and grating them with a fine cheese grater so the pieces look like little worms (thank you Misty ;).
Then mixing a commercial soft food (either Skippios No Soya Egg Meal for the Cordon Bleus, or Miracle Meal or Orlux Gold Patee for the Goulds) into the egg to dry it out so it's a bit crumbly.

Sometimes the best way (it involves being a bit of a nazi) to get your birds to eat new foods is to remove all other sources of food at night - and provide the new food first thing in the AM when they are at their hungriest and leave it for at least two hours.
This way they learn to recognize the new "stuff" immediately as food, and eventually you can stop removing the normal food and they will just want to eat the new stuff.

More often than not they do not try new foods because they do not recognize it as food in the beginning

Also - I find placing "wet" foods (egg food, sprouts, etc) in a shallow terra dish on the bottom of the cage to be the best place for it.