A New Bird Food

I don't often blog about the various foods I make for the birds. I tend to do a post when I buy a new food, but not usually when I make something. But, today, I'm sharing a food I made because I'm pretty darn proud of it.

It started on Thursday when I made some quinoa with veggies and lentils for the birds. Lenore loved it, as usual, but for some reason, Digby didn't want to touch it. I was a bit confused as she almost always eats quinoa foods. So, I added seeds to hers to try to get her to eat it. It worked a little--she picked out the seeds and ate some of the other stuff in the process, but she was still not eating it for some reason.

Yesterday I bought a sweet potato for the birds. I've given them sweet potato only once or twice previously and they hated it, but I decided to try it again. Last night as I was getting ready to give them the last of the quinoa, I had a stroke of genius (okay, maybe it wasn't a stroke of genius, but I hadn't previously thought of it). Why don't I cook the sweet potato and mix it in with the quinoa? There could be no bad outcome as I already expected Digby to refuse to eat the food anyway.

I popped to sweet potato in the microwave to cook it. When it finished cooking, I sliced off about a fourth of it. I mashed it, mixed it with the quinoa dish, sprinkled some seed and pellets in it, and dumped a bunch of cayenne pepper in it. I was expecting rejection from both the birds, but especially Digby.

I put Digby's dish in her cage and she immediately went to it. She started to reach in with her beak in preparation to chow down without looking, but at the last moment, she caught sight of the food. She froze. She looked at it carefully before slowly lowering her beak to pick out a seed. I sighed, knowing she was only going to eat the seeds. I left the room for a couple of hours. When I came back, I found Digby's dish almost completely empty! All that was left were the pellets. I was so happy that she ate it! Lenore ate most of his as well.

Today I had to make some more bird food. I made more quinoa and added some Kamut, collard greens, about a third of a green bell pepper, a jalapeno pepper, some yellow squash, and some lentils. I took the remain three-fourths of the sweet potato and mashed it and mixed the new quinoa mix in it.

(Excuse the crappy picture...I'm horrible at food photography)

I am quite happy about this. It's something totally new for the birds and they love it.