I bought a seed mix that's called wild harvest, and i wanted to know if it was good to feed it to my cockatiels. The only problem i can think of now, is that they could start to get picky and only eat the seeds instead of the pellets its got in there:

It's very likely that they'll do this lol. Birds tend to eat pellets better when they're served in a separate bowl, not mixed with seeds. Unfortunately this isn't a seed mix that I would buy. The first two ingredients (safflower and sunflower) are high-fat seeds. These are OK in small amounts but there's too much of them in this mix. The third ingredient is millet which is low fat, but IMO there's not enough of it in this mix. It looks like there are pumpkin seeds too although that's not on the ingredient list - maybe it's squash seed? This is OK but it's awkward for cockatiels to eat because of the size. I don't really see the rest of the ingredients so maybe they're in the pellets, but if there are little bits of dried fruit and whatnot in there it's likely that the cockatiels won't eat them. My birds just don't go for that sort of thing.

Here's a list of the ingredients: Safflower Seed, Sunflower Seed, White Millet, Heat Processed Soybeans, Wheat, Oat Groats, Whole Corn, Ground Corn, Feeding Oat Meal, Cantaloupe Seed, Green Split Peas, Yellow Split Peas, Banana Chips, Squash Seed, Watermelon Seed, Wheat Middlings, Peanuts, Dehydrated Papaya, Dehydrated Carrots, Soybean Meal, Corn Gluten Meal, Alfalfa Flakes, Cabbage Flakes, Celery Flakes, Crushed Red Peppers, Dicalcium Phosphate, Soybean Oil, Wheat Germ Oil, Mineral Oil, Salt, Calcium Carbonate, Potassium Chloride, L-Lysine, DL-Methionine, Magnesium Oxide, Manganese Sulfate, Ferrous Carbonate, Zinc Oxide, Choline Chloride, dl-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate (source of vitamin E), Vitamin A Palmitate, Beta Carotene, Niacin, Copper Sulfate, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (source of vitamin K activity), Riboflavin, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Mixed Tocopherols (preservative), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Folic Acid, Biotin, Thiamine Hydrochloride, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Corn Oil, Potassium Iodide, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Color Add (Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1).

A good way to improve this mix would be to get a basic parakeet seed mix of millet, canary grass seed and oats, and mix it with this one. That way the proportion of high fat seeds will be less and the proportion of low fat seeds will be more. You can pay attention to which items the birds eat and which items they don't eat to help you decide whether it's worthwhile to buy this brand again in the future or if you should go with something else.

Most seed mixes have a lot of stuff in it that my birds won't eat, and I started making my own seed mix because I was tired of throwing so much outside for the wild birds. I get a basic parakeet mix and add a few things to it that I know my birds will eat, usually sunflower, safflower, hemp seed and buckwheat. I get to choose the proportions so there's not a lot of the high fat seeds.

They also get several brands of pellets which I mix together in a separate bowl, not mixed with the seeds. When they pick and choose from this bowl they're picking one kind of pellet over another, not picking pellets over seeds. You don't have to go that far of course with just two cockatiels, but if they won't eat the pellets in the seed mix you should try serving the pellets separately. I don't know whether Coco has a favorite brand, but Zupreem Natural is the favorite pellet in my flock so he probably likes that. Zupreem Fruitblend is their second choice.

Thank you so much! I will see if i can get that Zupreme Natural you're talking about. And for the meantime, do you think i could buy budgie seeds and separate the seeds from the pellets and serve the pellets in a different bowl?



PS: I didnt realize i posted this in the "Health and Care" topics instead of the "Diet" topics lol.

It would be a nuisance to do it that way, but it's certainly possible if you're willing to do the work. You wouldn't have to take out all the pellets, just a few of them that you could give to the birds in a different location to see if they eat them better that way. If the birds will eat from your hand you could even offer it to them in your hand.

Where do you get the sunflower, safflower, hemp seed and buckwheat? Can you get them individually at pet stores? I would really like to do this with the parakeet food. I too feed the wild birds a lot :/

I get most of my seed from a seed seller at the local bird mart which is held twice a year. Most people probably don't have a resource like this. But there's a local pet store that sells safflower in bulk bins so you can get as much or as little as you want, and sunflower is available this way at many natural foods grocery stores. So you may have some local resources. Feed stores are often a good resource too, they often have pet food not just food for horses.

Just about any seed can be bought individually online, and if you shop around you might find a good price. Most of the hemp seed that's sold online is for human consumption so the shells have already been taken off. If you want to buy hemp seed online for birds you have to make sure that that the shells are still on.

I purchase extra seed stuffs for my birds from the health shops, and mix it up to my own recipe... this way hopefully they get a little of everything good

So, i hung some cilantro up on the cage, but the birds wont get near it, i even tried giving it to them with my hand, but they showed no interest.



Oh, and also, i put Coco and Pip on a guava/myrtle tree, and Coco started eating the leaves. Is that Okay?

PS: Ignore the round cage; my dad and I are going to make a huge cage later in the next month!

The internet says that guava leaf is used as a medicinal herb. Guava leaf extract can be toxic if too much is consumed but this is a lot more concentrated than the ordinary leaf. Eating a little bit of the leaf is probably OK but don't let them eat huge amounts of it.