Eat your chop, already!

[hiriki]

I've been making chop and successfully feeding it as breakfast as part of my routine for over a week now, which is huge for me because I was struggling to maintain a routine before.

I give them their chop... at first, I added a seed ball to the bowl to entice them, then eventually stopped once they recognized the bowl as a food bowl. Then two hours or so later I grab their dishes and into the trash it goes.

My lovebird has been eating it--it's a mixture of processed veggies (got my first food processor recently!) and plain brown rice. My doves will pick out the rice and ignore the rest. But my conure and my cockatiel couldn't care less about it. I added oatmeal as a topper today and they seemed somewhat curious about that but they aren't even touching the veggies :/

Back when they ate fresh food daily in the past it was a smoothie concoction with seeds mixed in and they just dug into it, but it took them a few weeks of being skeptical before they gave it a chance at first. I'm hoping that's what I'm running into here. Just wanted to vent mostly--so much veggie going into the trash every day 😫

I wonder if they don't want it because it's cold?? Needs more fruit?? Who knows lol.

 

[hiriki]

For those who might be curious or who might be able to point me in the direction of ingredients that birds typically do/don't like, the chop recipe is as follows:

I put a mini veggie tray through the processor (lots of broccoli, a few carrots, cauliflower, sweet pea, celery), then I process up a small sweet potato, then I add some fruit (it was apple last time--but not much!)
that's all mixed together with some rice so it's maybe 3 parts veggie to 2 parts rice, just about.

If the problem is the recipe I wonder what the community would suggest--I used to load up their smoothie with fruit but I know all that extra sugar isn't great for them, so I've been very conservative with fruit. I took a taste and honestly it tastes like sweet potato and broccoli, overwhelmingly lol. What are some ingredients that y'all find to be popular with conures and cockatiels in particular?

 

[BirdyBee]

I heard cockatiels like herbs... Pippen does.

 

[hiriki]

I'll try some cilantro maybe in their next batch. Thanks for the tip!!

 

[HeatherG]

I know my birds liked cinnamon and anise when I fed warmed soft food. Oregano, marjoram, basil would be possibilities, too.