Hi all, I'm new here
We have an American budgie who was hatched on September 25th which makes him 15 weeks old tomorrow and he is STILL on two handfeedings/day by spoon. This is the longest ANY budgie in my care has EVER taken and I'm just stumped. We always wean onto Zupreem Avian Maintenance Natural Diet and introduce veggies and fruit after they're weaned from the formula. We have not seen this baby drinking any water by himself yet and it appears he will only eat the pellets when it's crumbled into tiny bits. He's now being given the canary/finch size pellets but now wants it even smaller than that.
His morning feed was eliminated a few weeks ago with horrible results. He didn't eat and looked unwell so he's been back on two feedings/day and another attempt was made today with the same results. He does great on two feedings/day but as soon as we cut the morning feed, he crashes.
We've had some budgies take 12-13 weeks but this is a bit much. Should we be trying more variety on this baby? How else can we encourage him to eat on his own? He's been with two sets of budgies that have been handraised, weaned and gone and I was hoping he'd learn from them but nope!! what to do?
thank you in advance.