>Looking for some suggestions on how to get Sparky (2 1/2 month old)
>Quaker, to start eating his pellets. He use to love his apples, but now
>all he really wants is his seeds. Veggies and other fruit is not to his
>liking.
Does he like apple juice, or other fruit juices? If so, you can try
getting the pellets wet with the juice. I did this to convert a
malnourished conure to pellets years back (before I had any clue that
what I was doing was supposedly impossible ). I got her drinking
apple juice. Then I put some pellets in the juice dish. They absorbed
juice and sank to the bottom. She drank the juice down to the level of
the mush.
Gradually, over about a 2 week period, I put less and less juice in the
dish, so the pellets were exposed more quickly as she drank. After a
week or so, I saw her start licking the pellet mush to get the juice
taste. Then she started eating the mush. At that point, I began to just
moisten the pellets with juice instead of totally covering them with it.
I tapered off the juice until I finally ended up with separate dishes of
juice and dry pellets. To this day, the bird eats whatever brand of
pellets I put in her dish without protest!
I have to note here; as I did this, I changed the dish of wet pellets 2
to 4 times a day. (I was home all day long with her at that time, so it
wasn't a big deal). She also didn't have a juice/pellet dish in front
of her all day--we did this in the morning and evening. If you do this,
you must take out the wet pellets after no more than 2 hours, to avoid
growing bacteria or molds.
>PS- He will eat a little people food also, but very little.
Try corn bread. If he'll eat THAT, then you can sneak all sorts of good
things into the batter of the next batch. Anything you want him to eat
can go into the "bird bread"--veggies, fruits, pasta, rice/beans,
pellets(!), baby foods, cheese, etc. I've never had a bird refuse this
stuff, no matter what is in it! I even get my cockatiels to eat FRUIT
this way!
>When we let him out of his cage, which is often, all he wants to
>do is fly. Wings are trimed, but still he tries.
At 2 1/2 months, he's still a baby. Let me guess--he was allowed to fly
for a few days, and he just recently got clipped for the first time,
right? He hasn't yet figured out that his wings don't work any longer.
Keep him close to the floor until he stops leaping into space, so he
doesn't fall from too high and hurt himself.
--Kathy
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