Switching to Harrisons pellets

[jthorntonwillis]

Hi all,I know a few of my posts have been controversial, but The
Mackster is doing great!. I am trying to switch him to Harrisons. He is having none of it..So,do I starve him,or what?






















he is having none of it.

 

[ImmunoGoblin]

I missed the earlier controversial posts, but maybe find another pellet diet you feel is also nutritious and try that? Or if you're set on Harrison's, serve it in the form of birdie bread made with Harrison's pellets? I mean, you can't swap whatever he's eating 100% and provide only Harrison's, at least in my opinion, you can't, if he won't eat it. They're not dogs or toddlers. And the only other way is to provide the Harrison's in small amounts along with other foods, but if he hates it, he'll just continue to eat the other stuff and avoid that.

 

[Snabb133]

What I would do is to introduce the new Harrisons pellets in your old pellets mix, and whatever he eats the most will show and if he eats the harrisons pellets, then you can start putting more and more till he's fully adapted to the new food, if he doesn't, well then you can try another type of pellet that looks interesting & tastes great for them. For example, Tropican pellets (what I feed my Parrots), Nutribird, ZuPreem. Those I have found are highly loved by most parrots.

I have never had any problems converting parrots from seed only diets, to Tropican pellets. Those are in my opinion the best balanced ones out there. They smell great, they dampen the bad smell of the parrots breath, They taste great for most parrots, they look interesting, and they're nutricious. However they're not 100% organic, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Tropican pellets are made by Hagen's Avian Research Institution and it includes everything that your parrot needs to maintain a good basic health. Although fresh fruits and vegetables are needed to ensure it has no vitamin deficiencies, and to keep it healthy.

 

[vickie]

Hi all,I know a few of my posts have been controversial, but The
Mackster is doing great!. I am trying to switch him to Harrisons. He is having none of it..So,do I starve him,or what?






















he is having none of it.

I just switched my Blue Fronted Amazon from a seed diet to Harrisons High Potency pellets. I used their suggestions on switching. I feed her seed 3 times a day ( only in half hour intervals) while having pellets available at all times. Also didn't give her treats fruits or veggies during this time. One week later and she is eating the pellets. No more seed and she is back to her treats and other goodies.....good luck

 

[Starwing]

Hi all,I know a few of my posts have been controversial, but The
Mackster is doing great!. I am trying to switch him to Harrisons. He is having none of it..So,do I starve him,or what?






















he is having none of it.

Hi! I'm pretty sure I've missed your controversial contributions, but here's my two cents on switching stubborn 's to pellets!

Kobus is 6 years old, and always had dried sunflower seeds by his first owner. It was quite daunting to try and switch him! At first, I tried exactly what you wrote, and thought he'd eventually start eating if he was hungry enough, right?

Wrong!
Kobus refused to have ANY of it, and became *VERY* grumpy to the point of aggressive behavior when he became hungry, but he *WOULD NOT EAT* the pellets at first.

This resulted in an early abortion of that operation, at first.

But then, I decided to give it another shot, now armed with my new knowledge that Kobus (and generally parrots) will sometimes actually starve themselves rather than eating something they don't want to eat.

I decided to give him his original sunflower seeds, and supplement it with the fruits he always loved anyways. I crumbled some pellets on top of the wetty fruit parts, so they'd get "stuck" on them, and he'd accidently eat some anyways. This actually worked, and I saw that he would actually "ingest" some crumbs, at first, and then after a couple of days with this routine, even AIM for the larger crumbs and go out to look for them. All the while, I'd change the ratio between sunflower seeds and crumbs steadily more to the advantage of the crumbs and eventually a whole pellet or two.

In the end, I was gradually able to leave out the sunflower seeds alltogether, and then I'd add more whole pellets and reduce the amount of crumbled pellets. When I saw he'd actually eat entire pellets by himself, breaking them and eating them, I would reduce the daily "trojan horse fruit" until in the end, is entire (regular) diet consisted of just the pellets.

Ofcourse, Kobus still gets a lot of fruit and veggies on regular intervals, but it's not part of his "main" breakfast and dinner, so to speak, and he'll happily eat his pellets.

Also, you might want to look into palm kernel oil, heat it up on a spoon so it gets liquidy and swoosh the pellets around in them, they'll absorb the oil and it makes for great (controlled) vitamin A source, since if (rare case in parrots I guess ) the body has enough vitamin A, the liver won't metabolize the carotene in the oil to vitamin A in the first place, whereas "regular" pure vitamin A supplements would take a toll on the liver if there was too many of it.

Nevertheless, I'm sure you'll be successful if you keep trying and don't give up hope! Just make sure that you don't try to starve your bird into submission, because zons are strongheaded little critters!

 

[veimar]

Wishing you the best of luck in converting him! No matter how hard I tried none of my birds ever converted to Harrison. I just grind it in the coffee-grinder and add to their seed-pellet mix. What size did you try? I noticed that my bird only eat the tiniest pellets like Zupreem parakeet ones, and won't touch anything bigger. Hope you have better luck than me!