Questions about feeding veggies for a picky bird

After months of experimenting, our cockatiel Skye will only eat things if they're left whole and clipped/tied to the side of her cage like a toy.

We've been successful with all sorts of greens and herbs (collard and basil are favorites) without fear but she gets afraid of anything else and won't go near it. I was putting in things like raw squash, broccoli, and carrots because I figured raw wouldn't go bad as quickly as cooked but I was still taking it out after 4-6 hours. She wouldn't touch it and would stay on the other side of the cage like it was evil. I tried touching it a lot in front of her to show it's safe, pretended to eat some, actually ate some a couple times... Everything I read about.

Out of exasperation, I just left a zucchini in for 3 days before she started to chew on it. I removed it at the end of the day because she had eaten a lot of the skin off of it. That was yesterday. I hope that she'll be interested in the next zucchini or cucumber much faster now that she knows they taste good and aren't evil but I don't have more to try today so I'm not sure yet.

Regardless, is it okay to leave raw veggies in there for that long to get her over the fear like I did? Should I just give her the greens and squash and stop experimenting? Would dehydrated or freeze dried veggies be okay nutritionally (if we can get her to eat them)? She does love her Harrison's pellets at least.

Same here- I sometimes leave the parts/whole vegs/fruits lying around till they are really obviously dehydrating or almost going goo-y.

It sometimes takes Japie (avid pellet-junkie) up to 3 days to decide the nectarine is actualy food, not something that will explode in his face (though after 3 days I start to fear it might just do that).
Hot peppers are only edible after hanging about for at least 27 hours...
and palmnuts can only been eaten if they lie on the bottom of someone elses cage.
(the ones in your own are really suspicious of course!)


Parrots are insane!!!


(he will demolish a complete pomegranate in about 30 seconds, given the chance)

Produce often sits on the vine/ground/whatever in Nature... as long as it's un-pooped-on and fresh, I don't worry too much.