Best Food For Cockatiels – Seeds Or Pellets?

If you are looking for information about the best food for cockatiels, there are many varying opinions. Due to nutritional studies, most pet food companies make balanced seed mixes and if you are offering your bird a varied diet with fruit and vegies inbetween you can’t go wrong.

In this post I would like to look at pelleted diets for cockatiels.

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Is The Best Food For Cockatiels Pellets?

In the early 1980’s, some researchers at the University of California began to conduct nutritional research on cockatiels to determine what the best type of diet would be for them.

Researchers created  formulated diets for test flocks of birds.  Avian nutritionists have used the data gained from this original research to create many of the pelleted diets that are available for all sorts of parrots today.

Pelleted diets for cockatiels are created by mixing as many of the forty different nutrients required by cockatiels into a mash and then forcing the hot mixture through a machine to form various different shapes.

Some pellets are made colorful with various food colorants, and some are left plain.  The pelleted diet for cockatiels often provides more balanced nutrition in an easy to serve form that reduces the amount of wasted food, and the fussy bird can’t pick through the healthy food to get to the food he likes, as it is all the same.

Some cockatiels accept the pelleted diet readily, while others need convincing.  To convert your pet your will need to start offering him pellets alongside his current diet.  A lot of the cockatiel seed mixtures nowadays have pellets included.

Once he begins to eat the pellets, begin reducing the amount of seed and other types of food and increasing the pellets.  Within a couple of weeks, your cockatiel will be eating his pellets and enjoying them.

If your cockatiel is not taking to the pellets, you will need to show him how much you enjoy them.  Exaggerate your enjoyment of pellets, and you should pique your cockatiel’s curiosity and make the pellets more interesting to your pet.

If you have another bird in the house, it sometimes helps if this bird is a pellet eater, and the cockatiel will want to try and copy, if it sees how much the other bird is enjoying the pellets.

Never resort to starving your pet to get him to eat the pellets.  Always offer new foods alongside familiar favorites.  This will ensure that your bird is not starving himself and he will slowly start trying the new foods at his own pace.

Don’t be put off if he doesn’t dive right into a new food with gusto, as it will take time for him to get used to the new tastes.  Give him time and be patient, and when he does sample something new give him lots of praise and encouragement.

These are some examples of pellets for cockatiels that you can purchase online. Click on the pictures if you need to find out more information about them.

My Conclusion

I personally like to mix both. My parrot eats the pellets, but I also give her veggies each day and she eats both.

If you have your heart set on converting your cockatiel to a pelleted diet you may find this an interesting read.

My cockatiels also seem to eat both but definitely show preference for the seed. They do however nibble on the pellets each day as I find many broken up ones in the food each day.

I like to vary the food I give them, as I think to myself how bored I would get eating the same thing day in and day out. I am sure that it must be the same for your cockatiel.

So as far as the best foods for cockatiels goes, vary their diets and feed them natural and healthy items along with some pellets and you can’t go wrong.