i'm a blue blue salad

Having seeds in their diet is important for tiels and budgies (but oof, wild bird seed! yikes!) so generally I do 50/50 on seeds and pellets, in separate dishes because I don’t like it when seed hulls cover up the pellets. But if you’re just starting out with pellets, it may be difficult to get her to try them if they’re separate. When I was introducing Miso to pellets, I offered them 1) as a kind of goop by mixing them with warm water and mixing seeds in to make her ‘accidentally’ get mouthfuls of pellets while foraging for seeds, and 2) slightly soaked to soften them, but not mushed completely, so she could get used to their texture and shape. Gradually, I made them less soft, took the seeds out of the equation (they were fed separately), until she was eating pellets normally. There are several different ways to introduce pellets, though, and each bird is different.

(side note--I use a combination of Harrison’s, roudybush, and TOP’s pellets for all my birds. Both Miso and Kube take the smallest sizes for Harrison’s and roudybush and Miso straight up doesn’t like TOP’s pellets because they’re too big for her. Martini may have particular tastes for a certain size pellet too, so go ahead and explore the different sizes marketed for cockatiels/smaller birds. I believe if you email the companies, you can request samples as well, which I’ve seen some people do, but I haven’t done it myself.)

For fresh foods, I prepare chop usually with carrots, broccoli, bell peppers and other leafy greens and freeze whatever I don’t use that day. I keep pasta and grains separate from the mix, though, and add them on last. I give about 1-2 tbsp daily in the morning and remove it from the cages when it starts to look wilty and not fresh

I also offer sprouted seeds and grow grass in small dishes that I leave around! Here’s an old photo of the grass (sprouted from wheat grass seeds) that I stuck some millet in to make them dig around:

I love sprouting these things because they’re great as preening toys too! I’m trying to stick some seeds in those hole-y ball toys so that they’re like shredder toys that I can mount inside the cages

Also because she’s a hen it’s important to keep a cuttlebone accessible to her. I find it’s easier for me to just scrape off a bit of it and coat her pellets in the dust lol