Ask Lafeber

Cockatiel Using feet

When will my cockatiel start using his foot to hold food etc?
He is 6 months old now.

Hi,

Cockatiels do not always hold their food in their foot. Some owners only offer seeds, and this is not a nutritious diet and also not a food a cockatiel will hold. Pellets are a balanced diet, but again, not something the bird will hold. We make a foraging diet, Nutri-Berries, that is nutritionally balanced the same as a pellet, but the ingredients are not ground up. They contain seeds with the hulls removed along with other ingredients. Each ingredient is coated with a nutritionally balanced binder, so the bird gets complete nutrition in every bite. These diets encourage natural foraging and cockatiels tend to learn to use their foot to hold onto the food. I’ll give you a link to a video showing a cockatiel using his foot to access a foraging toy and then eat a Nutri-Berrie he holds in his foot! Foraging toys are toys that you can put their food in so that they have to work to get the food out.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda