How to convert your birds to pellets

"Dr. Patrick"

Dr. Patrick Ghysels

38 years as an avian vet, specialised in birds
50 years of keeping and breeding birds, but above all bird lover

Once the bird owner or breeder has decided to feed pellets to their birds, there is one more thing to do. Teach the birds to eat the pellets. We start with a period where we let the birds get used to the new food. We do this by adding a very small amount, about 10%, of pellets to their usual seed mixture. We give that for one or two weeks so that they get used to having them in their bowl. Birds are not familiar with these pellets, and if we only gave them these pellets right away, they would be put off by them and would not eat them.

After this period of 10 to 14 days, when the bird learns to recognise the pellets and starts to play with them a bit, we start the actual conversion.

Because from then on we will only give him pellets for a few days. And how do we do that?
On the first day, we put their seeds aside and serve pellets. In their usual bowl, but with pellets in it. Birds may not eat much the first day because they are not used to it yet, and at the end of the day they may have eaten a little too little. This is not a problem if it is only one day, because the next day we will feed them again with their familiar food, seeds, so that they can regain their strength. On the third day, the seeds are removed and they have to eat only pellets again.
We alternate all the time, but we extend the pellet interval each time. 2 days pellets, 1 day seeds with it, 3 days pellets, 1 day seeds with it etc. On our website you can find a program that you can easily follow to teach your birds to eat pellets once and for al.

Keep in mind that this can take a few weeks. The conversion to pellets is only complete when the bird eats pellets 7, 8 to 10 days in a row at least once.