Has anyone tried feeding their birds riced cauliflower? I have a bag in the freezer and was thinking of adding it to my next batch of chop. My chop looks (and IS) so delicious that my husband says the birds eat better than he does! I think I shall serve him a bowl for dinner with a side of smirk next time he says that!
Truth is, my chop really is the best food in the house most of the time. It's so colorful with the red peppers, broccoli, peas, and corn added to the Bird Street Bistro base. I also sprinke their chop with chopped scrambled egg and sprouted white promo millet. Up until last month I was chopping the veggies by hand into tiny budgie beak sized bites which took forever and risked bloody fingertips. Now I use a Ninja mini food processor and prep is a breeze and I no longer dread the once a month chop cooking day. They always have dry seed mix available but our 11 free flying budgies are fed chop on top of their cages garnished with a leaf of fresh romaine, and as soon as their doors open in the morning it's a race to the chop dishes. The 8 that live in flight cages
A lot of people say their birds, especially budgies and cockatiels, won't eat anything but seed and I empathize. It's so frustrating because you can't force them if they don't recognize chop or pellets as food (I don't feed pellets). However, most birds like sprouts and they're a great transition food to help expand their diet. I think it's important to keep trying, even though just seems wasted. All it takes sometimes is one bird in a group to start and the others often follow. When I got 6 English budgies and 3 new American budgies almost two years ago none of them had ever eaten chop or pellets but it didn't take more than a month for all of them to convert to chop when they saw my other budgies eating it. I truly believe their diet plus all the free flying time they enjoy keeps them in optimal health. Before we implemented the all day, at home or not, open cage door policy, my budgies were overweight perch potatoes living two each in 24x16x32h cages. Too often one would mysteriosly die. Now, I can't imagine keeping any budgies in cages smaller than 32x18x32h and even that seems too small unless it's just for sleeping. Obviously, they love to fly, and we enjoy watching them do zoomies around the room and love it when they fly over to visit with us. Our budgies lead gifted lives, indeed, but thanks to them, so do we! We can't imagine life without them- their beauty, antics, and endless chatter brightens even the coldest, darkest winter days.
I love Ava’s little squawks.
