Tips to get them to eat veggies from their BOWL?

[elysianblight]

Background: 
Cypress and Citrine eat really well from their bowls, on the cage floor. They will eat pellets, seeds, nutriberries, and kaytee brand dried greens right out of the bowls. They run to the bowls when the seeds or greens are put in, they love it. 

I have also gotten them to eat fresh basil, mint, mustard greens, asparagus, broccoli, corn, celery .. they LOVE it, but they will only eat it if it is hanging from the cage ceiling. Even after they get a taste and know they like it, if put it in their bowl instead of hanging they will just eat around it.  

Problem: 

I do intend to keep hanging fresh veggies for them as often as possible, but this does lead to a lot of waste. Obviously they are tiny, they cannot get through very much fresh food before it gets wilty. I also cannot buy groceries often enough to have a completely fresh veggie for them every day. 
I would really love to transition them to eating veggies from their BOWL because once they are comfortable doing that, I can start making and freezing chop for longer storage. Sadly I can't hang chop from the ceiling of the cage  

Any tips on this? 

[destinycall]

I started off by mixing chop with seeds. Then sprouted seeds. Then just the chop.

The seeds encouraged them to try it and they ended up getting a taste for it.

[elysianblight]

Jul 8, 2020 18:28:12 GMT destinycall said:

I started off by mixing chop with seeds. Then sprouted seeds. Then just the chop.

The seeds encouraged them to try it and they ended up getting a taste for it.

I've tried mixing up seeds with little cut pieces of carrot or pepper to tempt them and it didn't help, but maybe it will better will a full recipe of chop.  

Also sprinkled pellet powder on a mix of chopped up carrot, broccoli, and peppers the other day but they didn't touch that either.  
Maybe that would work better with just the broccoli .. orange and red/yellow colored things don't seem to tempt them at all. 

[reenie]

I grow my own on the window cill, so have a constant fresh supply of basil, corriander and carrot tops. I also give them mint and sage from the pots in the garden (they don't seem keen on that to be fair. You only need to pick as much as you need, and the rest doesn't go wilted....and it re-grows. It doesn't take much space either.

[Hezz]

Agree; grow your own and cut off only what they will go through in a day, otherwise if you are using store-bought only hang a small amount of each and keep the rest in the fridge. I feel budgies prefer to have their greens large and hanging. It looks much more like food like that, and they can help themselves. Chopped up greens have never been popular in my flock, unless it is picking up the dropped mess for a foraging feed.

[elysianblight]

I AM SO STUPID!!!!

Last weekend I accidentally slept late... really late... and thankfully my wonderful bf fed the birds.
He didn't do it "my way".. he filled both of their bowls to the BRIM, and he moved one of them off the cage floor to sit on their ledge perch.
I just shook my head at the weird, but later in the day I realized they were eating a lot more than usual. They've never been *bad* eaters, but they seemed to really enjoy having it on the ledge.

So they've been eating off the ledge all week and the cage floor is completely wasted space now, lol.
But I finally put two and two together and put their ice-cube of chop in the bowl on the ledge today.

They are eating it!!

[destinycall]

Congrats!

Chop is my favorite way to feed on work days. So fast, so healthy, and the birds love it!

That reminds me. I really need to stop by the grocer to get veggies for a new batch. My current supply is running a little low.