Need Advice for Cockatiel Feeding!

[jeg01]

Hi everyone, a week ago my girlfriend and I bought a Cockatiel who was seven weeks old (now eight). We were told by the breeders that he was weaned, and so we purchased him. Two days after we purchased him he began to make the “radio static screech,” which we learned meant that he was hungry.

Our problem is that the breeders only fed him millet, and so it’s all that he wants to eat. We know only eating millet is not healthy for him, so we are encouraging him to eat other foods, which he will do if we encourage him. We've been feeding him a ground pellet paste and some vegetables and pretend to eat the food, and this works temporarily but he quickly gets bored. He can, however, eat an entire stock of millet in a single sitting.

To stop his millet addiction we only give him millet at the end of the day and spend the rest of the day trying to get him to eat pellets and vegetables. He continues to screech whenever we’re nearby, however, so my question is are we going about this properly? We don’t want him to go hungry, but we also don’t want him to only eat millet. We weighed him recently, and he is slightly underweight. Does anyone have any ideas? Should we just continue to feed him millet?

 

[MayMaroa]

Try this
1. take his millet and add some water on them
2. Grind some pellets until they are like salt
3. Add the grinned e pellets onto the wet millet
and give it to him the grinded pellet would stick on the millet
so he will eat millet and pellets

 

[Cottonoid]

Try this
1. take his millet and add some water on them
2. Grind some pellets until they are like salt
3. Add the grinned e pellets onto the wet millet
and give it to him the grinded pellet would stick on the millet
so he will eat millet and pellets

Ooh I might try this on my bird's seed mix, thank you for the idea.

 

[MayMaroa]

Your welcome

 

[StormyPica]

That actually worked quite well with my budgie's meds, so I can vouch for Maroa's method.