# Eating only pellet crumbs, not pellet



## Emibirb (Sep 20, 2018)

I have been attempting to transition my budgie to Zupreem pellets (parakeet size), i’ve got the fruitblend in hopes he’ll pick the yellow ones since they look like seeds. When I hand them to him (in it’s full form) he drops it quickly. I’ve been layering the pellets on top of his Zupreem seed mix, but he just digs through it which is what i kind of expected. I’ve tried mixing millet and pellets into a little bread mix?, he doesn’t like wet stuff so he spits it out and digs through to eat the millet. Just today i’ve tried crushing it, and he started eating the crumbs and nibbling quarter pieces out of the full form ones. He’s eating it and seems to at least tolerate the taste, but he can’t seem to bother eating half of the pellet or even the full pellet, only crumbs and tiny 1/4 pieces. I don’t want to crush it all the time, because sometimes i don’t have time to. 

Any help would be appreciated! How do you get him to eat the pellet full size? Without it crushed?


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## FaeryBee (May 9, 2011)

*Hi! :welcome: to Talk Budgies

We always recommend using the X-Small Size which is the Canary Size of the Zupreem fruity pellets.
They are the smallest and most budgies have no problem eating those. 

In the meantime, why don't you just run the bag of pellets you have through a food processor or blender and then sprinkle the powder on the seed mix until it's all gone. The powdered form of a pellet is called "mash" and when it's sprinkled over the seeds the budgie gets the taste in its mouth when it hulls the seeds and learns to associate it with a food source.

What is your budgie's name?
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## Jesska (Apr 24, 2018)

My budgie will only eat pellet crumbs too, lol. I have a coffee grinder specially for his pellets so I can grind them up for individual servings, it doesn't take me any extra time and Kowhai loves it because the fresh grinding releases the lovely fruit smells from his pellets. :>


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## alba (Nov 15, 2014)

My babies will still only eat the Zupreem fruity canary sized pellets... they love that crap. 

Here's some tricks I use to get them eating their pellets:

1) I trick my boys by using the food bins that normally contain treats and veggies for pellets in the morning. My boys associate these bins with yummy things, so they get a breakfast meal of pellets because they like to gobble up whatever comes in these bins

2) I leave pellets in all day, their teaspoon of seed in the morning runs out early, so they snack on pellets the rest of the afternoon

3) I've recently had some luck with Harrison's high potency mash, which is basically pellet power (I think?). They don't nibble it on its own, but I sprinkle it over veggies at night to make their veggie snack extra nutritious. (That might be a bit overkill though, I do this mostly because I have one bird who is a little underweight who happens to be the main veggie eater)


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