Ask Lafeber

Feeding Questions

Hello, I have one budgie who is about 12yrs old. She primarily eats your pellets. Recently, her companion of the last 5yrs passed unexpectedly. I have brought her a pair of young budgies who she has taken an interest to but I haven’t been able to merge them into the same enclosure because 1) the young budgies came to me on an all seed diet (that I don’t want in my older budgie’s enclosure), really all millet because they weren’t eating the whole mix and they are refusing the pellets. I have since acquired pellet-berries which they will eat and I have Avi cakes on the way. My hope is that when they understand my older budgie eats the regular pellets they will cave, but if not, what would be a reasonable amount of pellet-berries to give them as a full diet? Or Avi cakes? 2) My other merger delay is that, in taking the flock to the vet I found that my older budgie and my cockatiel (12-14yrs old) both have high red blood cells. The vet has yet to confirm how far out of the normal range either is, but has recommended different courses of action. Both of these birds are already primarily eating your respective pellets with limited amounts of seeds/oats/greens, but is there anything else I should consider for their diets especially my budgie as I look to merge her with the young ones?

Hi,

I would not cage the new birds with the older bird. As a senior, she would mostly find the young birds to be annoying. Also, they might gang up on her as an old bird. And an odd  number of birds in the same cage rarely works out. There ends up being an odd bird out that gets picked on or bullied or ignored. She really is too old to be trying to introduce her to a new companion.

As for diet, the Nutri-Berries and Avi-Cakes are nutritionally balanced the same as a pellet, but they are not ground up. They can be fed along with or instead of pellets. The small birds like budgies and cockatiels, that eat seeds in the wild, do better on these foods than only pellets. Their digestive system benefits from whole seeds passing through. We only use fresh, human grade seeds with the hulls removed, along with other human grade ingredients and all coated with a nutritionally balanced binder, so they get complete nutrition in every bite. Even if they pick and choose which ingredients they want, they will still get the full nutritional value.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda