Learning to eat fruits and vegetables?

[Ladyeclectic]

My little conure seems quite content to stick with her seed diet - any fruits and vegetables I put inside her cage get summarily ignored. Usually I put the offending foodstuffs in their own container and leave the seed container, as the one time I tried to take out the seeds and have her focus on the fruits/veggies container she steadily threw a fit.

Should I put the fruits/veggies into her normal seed container? Someone else suggested making a mash out of things to get her used to it, and I've seen muffin ideas tossed about too. I'm slowly weaning her onto more of a pellet diet (right now I'm using Zupreme, hopefully tomorrow I can pick up some Harrison's from the local pet hospital) but really want her to get some produce fresh. I'm between paychecks at the moment so can't buy an assortment of veggies like I really want to (yet that being the case, I still spent half my remaining money for a week on pellet food and toys for her yesterday - no idea how I'll pay for gas or food for myself this week LOL), but any suggestions?

 

[Bobby34231]

Hi Sarah, what I've found that works best for me is the night before I pull the food bowl leaving only the water bowl, when trying to switch them over to a pelleted diet I use the same food bowl, for fruits and veggies I use a seperate bowl(s), I feed and water first thing in the morning, so what I do is give them the food that I'm trying to get them to eat at that time, I'll let it go for about 3-4 hours (no longer) before making a change, if its pellets, and I'm satisfied their eating them well enough to sustain them I'll leave that as their diet, if not I will place the food they were eating back in for the remainder of the day, fruits and veggies I pull after the first few hours regardless if their eating it or not as I don't trust it not being harmful by being spoiled after that, the best thing I can suggest is to monitor both the food bowl and the bottom of the cage to see whats being eaten and whats just being thrown out of the bowl, if you have a gram scale that would also be great as a monitoring tool to make sure their eating well, good luck

 

[Ecclipse]

Hi LE,

Bobby has it spot on with the water bowl reamaining in at night with the seed bowl taken out. I also change my fruit and veg during the day so that it doesnt attract flies or go off - it gets very hot here in summer.

My lovebird also didnt want to eat fruit and veg and what I did was sit down and cut it up in front of her and eat bits of it to spark her curiosity. She would then come off my shoulder to investigate. You can also feed off your shoulder so that your conure sees you eating it - in the wild they know what to eat because the rest of the flock are eating it. I then found that she preferred to eat outside her cage while playing. I put the fruit or veg (I feed fruit in the morning and veg at night) on a plastic lid so that it was flat - for a bigger bird a plate can be used - and placed it amongst her toys so that she saw it when she was exploring her toys.

I am also on a small budget as Im a student/assistant teacher and what I do it I buy the small fozen veg bags. I normally get 2 at a time and mix them then Rosie has a mix of corn, brocolli, cauliflower, beans, carrots and peas. I then buy her spinach leaves and sprouts and weave them through the bars. I try make it as fun as possible.

Hope this helps