Can I use the ingedients of good pellet brands and just mix them together myself?

[Phoenixcockatiel]

Hey there!
My cockatiels are really hard to get off seeds and they wont accept pellets yet, but looking up different brands of pellets and reading the ingedients, I have ound them to be made up of seeds, dried vegetables and different kind of herbs.
I'm specifically talking about the TOPS pellets here which I have heard to be some of the best, but they're super expensive.
Can I not just get the ingedients myself and mix them together? I think that would be cheaper and maybe my birds would rather accept it since it looks more familiar to the old seed mix.
Has anyone tried something like this / has an opinion? Thank you in advance!

 

[rheashard2]

It can be done. Depending upon your birds personality. I've mixed a few products (I can only remember NutraBerries) with Harrison's as primary. A few added for variation and a treat. Yours are primarily seed eaters. Get the smallest available or sample packaging. That will decrease out of pocket expense. Consider adding chop too. Parrots can be resistant to dietary change. I add the variety to aid in keeping my CAG a little open-minded about change. There's always a chance of running out.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

Alil you would have is a powdery mixture because the individual ingredients are ground up like flour them mixed together. The ingredient list isn't a recipe and doesn't include the water or other liquid that's added to the dry ingredients to make a batter. Tops then uses a manufacturing process called cold pressing that results in hard, dry uniform pellets. There is no way you could manufacture your own pellets. It would be like trying to make cookies with nothing but a list the dry ingredients and no quantities, recipe or oven.

However, you can make your own parrot foods in the form of birdie breads or 'chop" (a mixture of cooked grains, beans, nuts, chopped vegetables, cooked and mixed in large batches and frozen in portions). Many Parrot Forum members make chop that they feed their birds every day. Birdie bread is much loved by many parrots. Are your cockatiels willing to eat anything other than seed mix?

There's a section under Forums that has many recipes for chop and instructions on making birdie bread.

You can also feed your cockatiels fresh vegetables whole, chopped up, finely grated, or cut into shapes they find appealing. Most birds like dark green leafy veggies like fresh spinach or kale.

It may take time to get your cockatiels to eat chop or birdie bread if they've been on an all seed diet. ave you ever tried getting your cockatiels to eat cooked rice? It's not a regular diet but If they are willing to eat cooked rice they would probably be willing to eat chop because it often has cooked rice and other cooked grains in it with a similar consistency.

 

[wrench13]

I think it possible to do, if you have unlimited time and dont mind the effort. Easier to just get your birds to eat the TOPS pellets.

 

[ParrotSnakeMan]

I feed all three of my birds a mixture of the 3 foods shown. The Zupreme Nutrismart has too much freeze dried fruit so I tend to remove that and feed sparingly as a treat.

I tried Harrison’s on its own and they do eat it but eat more pellet food in general once I started offering the mixture.

Each bird has their favorite items in the mix but seems to enjoy the variety. I had tried several different high quality pellets before finally landing on the 3 in the picture.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

I think it possible to do, if you have unlimited time and dont mind the effort. Easier to just get your birds to eat the TOPS pellets.

The beauty of pellets is that all the ingredients are in each bite- the ingredient list shows what they're getting and they can't just eat their favorite things and toss out the rest. Making your own mix of the ingredients without blending them and forming pellets out of the blend often results in very expensive wasteful cherry picking.

 

[LaManuka]

Hey there!
My cockatiels are really hard to get off seeds and they wont accept pellets yet, but looking up different brands of pellets and reading the ingedients, I have ound them to be made up of seeds, dried vegetables and different kind of herbs.
I'm specifically talking about the TOPS pellets here which I have heard to be some of the best, but they're super expensive.
Can I not just get the ingedients myself and mix them together? I think that would be cheaper and maybe my birds would rather accept it since it looks more familiar to the old seed mix.
Has anyone tried something like this / has an opinion? Thank you in advance!

I once had the most TERRIBLE time trying to get a very stubborn cockatiel off her seed diet!! After an 8 week battle of wills, what worked for me was grinding her pellets up into a fine powder in a mortar and pestle, and sprinkling that over her seeds, just so she could get a taste for the pellets and couldn't avoid ingesting at least some of them. Over the next few days I just ground the pellets less finely until voila!! Within a very short space of time she was eating them like she had done so all her life!! TOPS are a great brand and my guys get those, but have you tried Harrisons? I get the "Lifetime Fine" pellets for my two tiels and my princess parrot, and because they look a lot like millet they took to them straight away, so perhaps yours might as well

 

[Phoenixcockatiel]

Thank you for all the replies!! I will be looking into the chop recipes - I honestly thought "chop" just meant chopped up veggie mixes.
Then I will order the harrissons pelllets, hopefully my birds can adapt quicker to them.
Right now, they have seeds & fresh veggies daily, but I have never seen them eat the veggies when their in small pieces, only when I put them in whole, so I'm unsure to how they will react. I'll keep you updated

 

[rheashard2]

Whole or foot size is fine. Not sure but chop simply means cutting pieces into desired size.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

Some birds hesitate eating chop if they're not familiar with it. Most birds like sprouted seed. If you sprout some seed (budgie seed mix is good for this) and mix the sprouts with the chop or sprinkle them on it they'll be tempted to try it or end up eating some chop trying to pick out the sprouts.

 

[Parrotmo]

Harrison’s totally rocks, my grey is almost 40 and we moved him to Harrison’s when he was 3. He’s big enough for coarse grind, and makes a huge mess, often preferring fine grind for eating. They have transition breads and foods, and we feed some of the coarse pellets as treats, e.g. pepper coarse. He moved from adult lifetime to high potency as he grew older, and it’s made a difference. The pellets mean I don’t have to worry so much about balancing minerals and vitamins.

AND most importantly, it is not his only food, he gets a mix of all fruits and vegetables that we eat every day. I no longer mix up a bunch of chop for the coming days, it’s fresher just fresh. Slice strawberries, share the tops, give him the banana end with the handle and leave the skin on, apple cores are more more fun than slices as are peach pits( the pits have not killed him, he just gets the fruits off and plays with the pit a minute like a wild parrot), greens are fun, my fenugreek sprouts totally rock (again, these are my sprouts I eat that I share with him- I have no bandwidth for all the special sprouting I used to do for him, easier to rinse a jar 3 times a day than sprout out birdseed) he loves cooked sweet potato and pumpkin…..you get it. A spoonful of my morning cereal be it oats, buckwheat, quinoa, etc. he used to love box cereal and drink milk off the spoon but we don’t let him have junk food anymore and we’re vegan now. And he loves to share with the dog for some reason (I am not brave enough to share the dog’s kibble with him, however when we make the dog’s fresh meal, he shares in some of the veg and berries.) no more peanuts though, he was like a heroin addict around them, throwing tantrums and shrieking if he didn’t get them and keep getting them. After going through withdrawal a few times, we were done. Sunflower seeds, in fact no other legume or nut or seed has prompted that reaction, just peanuts. Oh and no moth eggs hatching like we used to get from seed mixes.

1 bag of high quality pellets as a base then go wild with fruits and veggies chop and nut and seed treats. Beans aren’t really high on the wild bird feed list unless super fresh and green, and like any vegetarian, they won’t be protein deficient, they can’t be since all whole food has protein, even those greens.

 

[rheashard2]

Nice to see another Harrison person. My CAG was on coarse until puberty. It became difficult to keep her weight on. Then High Potency and that was 17 yrs ago. She likes pepper flavor too. She gets veggies with limited high sugar foods. No, we are not junk food free. French fries as a reward post vet trip. Pizza crust is a favorite. But her ultimate favorite is sweet potato and scrambled egg omelet. Her labs and vet checks are excellent. From this forum I finally found a combination of chop that she eats instead of tosses (mostly). Now she gets on her chop stop, waiting for breakfast and has asked for seconds.

 

[Parrotmo]

Thank you for all the replies!! I will be looking into the chop recipes - I honestly thought "chop" just meant chopped up veggie mixes.
Then I will order the harrissons pelllets, hopefully my birds can adapt quicker to them.
Right now, they have seeds & fresh veggies daily, but I have never seen them eat the veggies when their in small pieces, only when I put them in whole, so I'm unsure to how they will react. I'll keep you updated

Also, big pieces are great if cut or arranged like toys (carrots are particularly good for this, they will address them like foot toys or you can kebab them) we will fold them inside toilet paper exhausted paper towel roll tubes with short pieces of organic cotton trussing twine braids as a foraging toy. They get familiar with the feel and taste and then start to shred and eat them as well. (And it’s cheap entertainment.)