Hazel has been with us two weeks now & has made great progress! I did notice that she was eating her poo, so I gave her a cuttlebone & she has been going to town on it! The seed that was sent with her is a "premium" mix with lots of different things including sunflower seeds & little colored bits that remind me of cat food. She seems to dig through everything & just eat the smallest seeds. Should I get her a different type of mix? Should I leave it in her house until she eats all the bits? (She also has access to egg crumbles in her cage.)
Those Fiesta type mixes promote selective feeding. They're very unlikely to eat everything in the mix. Seed mix on a whole isn't a very healthy diet - I'd look into trying to transition her to a good quality pellet.
Cockatiels being granivores still do well with seeds in their diet, though. I personally make a homemade mix that I can feed dry OR sprout with beans and such added. If you'd rather a commercial mix, some good quality ones are Higgins (Safflower Gold or Mayan Harvest Yucatan), Volkman (Super Cockatiel, No Sun), or Versele-Laga (Loro Parque Australian).
So many options! I looked at the seed mixes you suggested, I noticed some have fruit, some have greens, & then some say sunflower free. I don't even know where to start! Lol
Honestly, the best way to go is with plain old seed with none of the added stuff in it. You could always buy the sunflower free one and then add in the amount of sunflowers you want. Some people have seed junkies who only eat sunflowers so they have to get the seed without it so their bird will eat something else. I never had that issue and my birds ate all the seed, not just one thing in particular.
Is there a specific kind of sunflower seed I should get her? We give them to her as treats for taming, she won't eat them out of the mix herself. Lol. But the sunflower seeds I give the wild birds are alot smaller.
My flock pick through those colourful seed mixes and practically leave half of it, too. I usually buy one bag of budgie seed mix and one of either parrot or cockatiel and mix them together. That way there is a healthier sunflower seed distribution, and none of it goes to waste!
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