Best seed with variety

Hello all. I am in search of the best seed with the most variety for both my cockatiel and blue headed pionus. I'm looking for something that has a large amount of variety of dried veg fruit nuts etc.

It depends on where you are located. There's a wonderful American online bird store called MySafeBirdStore.com that has exceptional variety for healthy mixes with seeds in them. In Canada, there's an awesome online store called ThingsForWings.ca. Both have a great variety to choose from.

Just remember that seeds are okay as a supplement, but that pellets and fresh fruits and vegetables are the most balanced diet to provide our birds. Your cockatiel may be better adapted for a diet with more healthy seed, but your BHP will likely not do as well if his diet is heavily seed based and he may end up with fatty liver tissue as a result.

Assuming you are using seed as a SUPPLEMENT and not as the main diet as stated by Dino...

Those two species need very different things. The cockatiel likely wouldn't eat the fruit, veggies, and nuts anyway, but the seeds will simply be too large for one or two small for the other.

I recommend Volkmans or Royal seeds. I use Royal. For the cockatiel you will want the Cockatiel Cuisine, and for the Pionus the Hookbill Cuisine. These will be the two with the most fruits and veggies in them in my experience. But again; seed is not an acceptable main diet.


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Tropimix for cockatiels

I recommend Hagen Tropimix as well. They have several different varieties, and they have a small hookbill mix, a large hookbill mix, as well as a cockatiel mix. It's fortified with a daily dose of vitamins/minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, DHA, and Omega 3's. It's got a great high protein to low fat ratio, and has a huge variety of fruits, veggies, nuts, and herbs. I feed the small hookbill to my Senegal and the conure/cockatiel to my Quaker, cockatiel, and green cheek in addition to their pellets.

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Can I ask why you mix in pellet's, I'm pretty sure tropimix has tropican pellet's in the mix, I add (more) pellet's in case she's picking through the mix and eating only certain foods and even then I don't think she's getting much pellets down

adz1984 said:

Can I ask why you mix in pellet's, I'm pretty sure tropimix has tropican pellet's in the mix, I add (more) pellet's in case she's picking through the mix and eating only certain foods and even then I don't think she's getting much pellets down

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A high quality pellet, in my case Zupreem Natural, is the main staple of the bird's diet. The seed mix is only supplemented to the pellets in a very small quantity. The "pellets" that are added to most seed mixes #1 aren't nearly enough pellets to give the bird the appropriate nutrition, and #2 they are generally not as high a nutritional quality pellet as the pellets designed to be a stand alone diet.

People used to feed pet birds a seed mix that was made for the general size of the bird. That was it, you'd feed your birds seed mix every day, many people would free feed their birds by just filling up their food dish with seed mix every day and maybe add a few treats. After years and years of research about the nutritional needs of captive birds (in comparison to the needs of wild birds), it has been well proven that an all-seed-mix or all seed and nut diet for a captive bird not only does not provide sufficient nutrition for the bird, but can actually cause long-term illness and disease over time and shorten the life of captive birds by years. It was determined and proven many times over that feeding captive birds a diet of mainly a high quality pellet combined with fresh veggies and whole grains, with a very small amount of seeds, nuts, and fruit added provides adequate nutrition to captive birds, protects them against nutritional influenced diseases, and can lengthen their lives substantially. It can also help with their psychological and behavioral health.



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I also feed Tropimix, and add extra Tropican pellets into it. We also feed Zupreem pellets mixed in. Tropican pellets are just as high quality as Zupreem, but my birds like the variety.

From what i've read tropican pellets are great, I've been feeding 1tablespoon tropimix, 1 tbp tropican sticks, 1 tbp seed mix (minus sunflower) most of it get's eaten but not much pellet's do. I refill this in the afternoon, and offer soft zupreem/tropican pellets in a seperate bowl, again little get's eaten.

My bird is so picky with pellet's I just want to find a mix that she devours, i've got about 6 different pellets in my closet, I think the only one she really started to like was harrison's but that's finished and out of stock now.